The Taylor Twins
by The Nachoman
Summary: To the twin sisters Taylor Zoe and Taylor Rose Hebert, high school was nearly hell. But then they triggered as a Case 70...
1. Prologue: Platinum Mesh

**The Taylor Twins**

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**Prologue****: Platinum Mesh**

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**Saturday February 26, 2011, early afternoon; Brockton Bay Western Parklands, far side of the Cycling Path.**

It was a typical scene of any urban-jungle parkland: two teenage girls wearing exercise clothes (and jackets, caps and scarfs, in the near-freezing temperatures), walking slowly as a cool down from a good workout. Although, closer inspection would show that only the red headed one was wheezing, while her fitter, dark skinned companion was barely breathing hard.

"You seriously need to do more exercise, Emma," opened the dark skinned one, frowning down at the other. "You are soft as hell!"

"I'm a model, Soph: I'm supposed to be soft!" The redhead replied, scowling back. "I'm here because I want to see if I can sweat rather than diet!"

The first one, Sophia, frowned some more at her friend's standard answer, but left Emma alone to make her way to a nearby bench. She meanwhile wandered off the path, and ended up behind some bushes.

Idle eyes found a ladybug on a branch: one of her guilty, girly pleasures! She just gazed at it, but an idle though found her wanting to pick it up. But how could she do that without scaring it? She looked down at her hand and idly turned her little finger into mist-form for just a moment.

Could she do it?

She then eyed the path and found it empty, except for Emma on her bench. She thus turned her entire hand to mist and slowly phased it up through the branch. She then solidified her hand again, and found herself holding the still undisturbed bug. She reversed her movements, and left it sitting back on the branch. Just to make sure her phasing hadn't killed it or something, she then blew gently at it. The critter was indeed alive: it crawled to the opposite side of the branch, getting away from the "wind".

Sophia grinned: She could filter through lifeforms, picking up or phasing through at her convenience!

"Emma," she shouted, standing up at the same time. "Get your gelatinous ass over here!"

"Kiss my baby-soft modelling assets, you Amazon!" Emma shouted back, making Sophia momentarily bristle at the little known fact that she was wearing a stuffed bra. But then again, she would only take such an affront from Emma, at least without turning the mouthy idiot into minced meat. And then again, Emma knew not to say something like that around witnesses, because, friend or not, Sophia needed to always be seen as strong.

Although, thinking about it, she wouldn't mind it so much from Madison either: she really wanted to consider her to be another real friend, rather than just the only other girl, other than Emma, that had the strength of character to talk back at her. Too bad the midget never seemed to hang out with them outside of school, unless they were going out as a larger group.

And Emma came to a stop beside her, looking expectant. Wordlessly, Sophia first made a show to Emma about her hand being empty, then mystified it and took the unseen ladybug from its branch, and showed it to Emma.

As Emma watched the bug take flight, she spoke in a slight tone of awe: "So, you have learned to mystify living creatures on the go!" And then Emma pulled her down into a soft, warm embrace: another thing that only Emma was allowed to do, and again only with no witnesses. Sophia bit her lip and reluctantly returned the hug, all the way keeping her eyes on the nearby trail, and thanking her ancestry that her skin was just _so_ dark that nobody could tell when she blushed!

Thankfully, Emma disengaged before Sophia would have _gently_ pushed her away, then walked firmly back to the trail and looked back at her over-shoulder.

"Now, to celebrate, lets make your wish come true and get this gelatin buns a little firmer!" She said, as she then gave herself a firm slap on the tush and took off running at a brisk pace that both of them knew she wouldn't be able to maintain.

Sophia was just too glad to take off after her, staying a step back so she could wait to provide "encouragement" once Emma's pace began sagging.

Not that it happened like that, though: after about ten minutes (and a single butt-slap), Emma made them stop in front of a picnic ground. One that, notably, was cordoned off and had flags about fire ants.

Emma picked her hand up, then glanced at the field and back at her. Took her a moment, but Sophia understood.

They both grinned rather nastily. Sophia then pulled Emma into an over the shoulder carry, and began looking for a secluded spot away from the trail. Meanwhile, she thought: Sophia didn't truly understand Emma's obsession with the Taylor twins, but supported her anyway. Sophia had come to think of the twins like hedgehogs: undoubtedly prey, but unrewarding. Like the jaguar that she saw herself as, Sophia didn't really care to run down unrewarding prey, but Emma here was like an arctic wolf (or a eskimo seal hunter) and wanted to out-stubborn her prey. And even if Sophia was weary of this unending hunt, she was also supportive of this young predator she had fostered.

Finally, Sophia found a nice patch of tall grasses (so Emma wouldn't gain any unsightly scratches ahead of her next photo-op), then "accidentally slipped" (taking care that Emma didn't hit the ground too hard), playfully wrestled and rolled around with her (also making sure Emma ended on her rather than on the near-freezing soil), and then slipped her cold fingers under Emma's jacket to start tickling her!

Of course, Emma immediately started tickling back, and Sophia let her exercise another one of her exclusive privileges: she let Emma win!

They ended breathing hard, dirty, with Sophia cradling Emma's head to her nearly flat chest, and feeling the safety of not having to be tough all the time. The only person alive that Sophia felt she could be a girl with, rather than a fighter... Fight for these moments, not through them!

This delicate slip of a girl, who was now momentarily kneeling up, unzipping their jackets and tossing away their scarfs, and _now_ was laying her spandex-wrapped breasts just below Sophia's', and had begun nuzzling Sophia's neck.

Emma, her best friend ever...

Not for the first time, Sophia wished Emma was a boy, so she could suck his face off! Or for herself to be a lesbian, or a boy! But no, the roll of the dice had given them both a liking for hot dogs rather than tacos. For Sophia could certainly see herself forever with somebody like Emma: they were both smart and well connected, and while Emma was so delightfully feminine, Sophia was comfortable with being a warrior rather than feminine. Opposites attract, and Sophia had certainly fantasized of Emma as some feminine boy like so many boy band singers... Sophia had to bite her lips to keep herself from doing more than pulling Emma level with her, then squeezing all of Emma against all of her, much to Emma's surprise.

But Emma's surprise didn't last long, making them roll on their side as they began to aggressively rub their necks together, fondle each others' bodies and kind-of wrestle with their uncoordinated legs.

They then had to release each other, though, because they had begun sliding down the slight incline! But they both rapidly stopped their little momentum, and where chuckling as they crawled back together.

Well: Sophia was chuckling, but her Emma was giggling, and that was a sound Sophia could listen to all day...

She let Emma push her down, and saw her biting those perfect lips before she talked:

"How much I wish you were a boy, Soph..."

"I'll be one for you, Softie..."

And their lips came together with grand enthusiasm... and missing fireworks. Sophia opened her eyes to see Emma doing the same, their eyes locking together in desperation as they redoubled their efforts to star a fire in each other. They were all-but-shouting that they would learn to enjoy munching carpet if the other was gay!

But they were straight. They were _both_ straight. Neither had a gay best friend to sacrifice for!

Emma slowly pulled away, and Sophia barely put on a token opposition. Five minutes later, they were trotting at a sedate pace, discussing the logistics of the improved chloroform prank... and exchanging many wishful glances.

And Sophia was also thinking about phasing into a sex shop near her home and getting a double-headed dildo, a strap-on or something like that. Because it wasn't weird at all for two straight girls to do some sexual experimentation with each other, was it?

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**Monday March 7, 2011, undetermined time; somewhere...**

Taylor Zoe Hebert woke up... or tried to, wading through a mind-numbing headache... and her eyes wouldn't stay open...

Not quite quickly, but she noted that she had woken up on the floor, her face an inch away from her twin's, Taylor Rose. Her aching left arm, her tied wrists, her tied ankles and the discomfort of an arm under her side also informed her that her sister and her were tied together, in a position of a reciprocal hug. And the light being a sliver under a door, and the smell of chemicals, informed her that they were once again locked inside the janitorial break room. And she then tried to sigh, but discovered her mouth was duct-tapped shut.

Also, she noted that her jacket was gone, and she was down to a top. A top that she hadn't put on this morning. Would it be scrawled with insults or something?

The first time this had happened, both Rose and her had been terrified until the janitors came in the afternoon to start their shift. The second time, they had been furious, but had also been prepared and had cut through the zip ties in time to spend their last period in the infirmary. Today, Zoe thought she should only be annoyed at this shit, and she doubted her sis would disagree, as the previous bout had given them plenty of practice with cutting zip ties with an unassuming nail file secreted under an insole. Only real problem was that they had been ambushed around noon, so they would be lucky to cut themselves away before the entire school day was lost...

So now that her eyes were focusing properly again, she began to flick her sister's nose with her own.

It took a few minutes, but Rose's chest eventually expanded into deeper breathing, and her eyes begun opening.

While Rose's brain was taking several minutes to boot up, Zoe made a conscious effort to take deep breaths and remain calm, thus trying to be a rock to her sis. No such luck, though: Rose began sniffing as soon as she took stock of the situation, and Zoe was left pressing her own forehead against Rose's, and trying to hug her tighter, while she also failed to hold in her own tears.

Thankfully, their emotional outburst didn't last too long, and they could compose themselves back. Rose then began gesturing backward with her neck, and tried to pull backward. Zoe thought she understood, so she rolled on top of her, painfully squishing her hands on the way. Rose then rolled on her, and her legs hit something on the way down. By the sound of it, must have been a chair or a stool. But it had also let something fall on them. A trash can or a bucket, she guessed by shape and weight. Rose and her wiggled some more, and it fell and rolled away behind Zoe's hips. Zoe bumped it away for good measure.

She did know their ultimate objective, but her head was still a bit too pained from the knock out salts or whatever, so she was content to just lay still for a moment, and Rose didn't seem to disagree with her posture.

A few seconds later, though, Rose tried to scream through her muffled mouth, and began to frantically scoot away from her. Zoe cooperated and scooted forward after her, but she didn't get it... until she felt something climbing over her exposed lower back. And then burning sensation!

That bucket had had fire ants!

And now they had found the far wall, and Zoe was still feeling the swat of ants on her body grow and grow. The feeling was an easy one to follow: just look for the sensation of being on fire!

Rose was screaming at her through the gag, pulling her, seemingly urging Zoe to roll and be on top, or even alternating and pushing her so _she_ could roll into the tide of ants; however, Zoe pulled back, pushed back and did everything she could to stay right were she was, sacrificing herself to shield her sister from this nightmare...

And, as she felt the ants crawl up her neck and start nibbling at her cheeks, she had one positive though: _'At least Dad will now be able to tell us apart at a glance...'_

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**Meanwhile, outside of Winslow High School, Brockton Bay...**

PRT Agent (External) Hannah Roosevelt, usually much better known by her day job as Protectorate ENE Member "Miss Militia", sat in the passenger seat of an unlabelled PRT car, eyeing the tide of exiting students: she knew that, if the dangerous individual even bothered with schooling, then Shadow Stalker attended Winslow.

And it had certainly not been an easy task to narrow down her movements even this much: over the last twenty to twenty two months since the vigilante had become active, she had been moving around like the tide, following the higher crime statistics and leaving crucified criminals behind. But somebody had finally done a historical, animated map of her timeline of movements, and it had shown that, despite being almost dead centre in her movements pattern, the Stalker hadn't ever done anything within a half mile radius from this school.

And well: too bad for the girl, but months ago, the order had been signed that she had to be captured at all costs. That was as close as you could get to a kill order for a minor—barring S-classes like Bonesaw's—! And it was due to two reasons: first, the girl wasn't simply fond of lethal ammunition, but had also shown obvious and intentional cruelty with seven of her so-far eleven lethal take-downs. Secondly, the girl had a very dangerous attitude, letting crimes in progress be completed unless the victim was fighting back, and twice so far shooting through hostages in favour of hitting the assailant.

Nonetheless, the girl also happened to be good, very good, at keeping her identity secret: almost two years, and SS's physical description was down to "female, born around 1996, either very dark skinned or wears a black body stocking under costume." Not even her crossbow bolts were trackable: they were handmade, and made from anything from fishing poles to lathed oak dowels, passing through sky poles and pretty much anything you could buy in a garage sale. If anything, Miss Militia had been among the panel that voted her to receive a Tinker 1 rating for them.

A girl that fit the physical profile then walked out, closely followed by a group. Hannah narrowed her eyes, as the girl also seemed to fit SS's proposed psych profile to the dot: the girl was just wearing an athletic uniform, but she might have as well been wearing royal accoutrements as she let herself be touched by the members of her royal court before she turned around and walked back into the school.

Hannah was reaching for her binoculars, to be able to see the girl's jersey number, when it happened...

**[Destination!]**

**[Agreement!]**

**[Trajectory!]**

**[Agreement!]**

And then Hannah found herself opening her eyes, slumped down in her seat. She quickly picked herself up and picked up her binoculars, and found that the girl in question had fallen down flat on her face, and was being attended by her "supplicants". Hannah then shock awake her plain-clothed, slumbering chauffeur, pulled two tactical balaclavas and tossed one at him while she hastily pulled the other on, yelled at him to follow her, and broke into a run toward, not her suspect, but the only open entrance that she could see on the building, knowing that the feeling of _enormity_ had come from somewhere angled down. Basement?

As she ran by the fallen girl, now being picked up by the rest, she had a good look and mentally profiled her: the rail-thin, yet muscular build of an Ethiopian marathoner, luscious black straightened hair reaching to her lower back, jersey numbered '27' with the name 'S. Hess', a face that she would easily sketch later, and a pair of tarmac running shoes being carried like sceptres by two of the boot-lickers.

Entering the school, Hannah was momentarily stunned, as she could see hundreds of roaches walking in plain view in every possible surface! But she dismissed it, and ran in, looking (and sending her chaser looking) for any obvious basement access. He found it first, and down they went into even more visible insects, and almost immediately found a door that had a broomstick and some rope tied to the doorknob, jamming it shut. Quickly looking around to check for possible witnesses, she dismissed her green energy from being a dagger inside her boot and reshaped it into a bat, which she then wielded overhead like an axe and swung at the door, reshaping it mid-swing into a replica of a ridiculously heavy morningstar that she had once seen wielded by some French mid-level Brute, and almost immediately reshaped it back into a bat to not be pulled down by the monstrous weapon. As expected, a one-by-four feet hole instantly developed on the door, the floor was showered in splinters, and she could see into a darkened room. She reshaped her bat into a baton-flashlight and shone it in, taking in two twitching bodies on the floor, surrounded by a ring of... red dots?... red ants?... Fire ants!

Except that the fire ants were now beginning to march her way! And an instant later, a face-full of roaches flew out the hole and had her stumbling backward! Hannah was no fool, so she saw the writing on the wall, made a snap decision and began running out of the basement, pulling behind her her chauffeur, and only stopping to pull a fire alarm.

Running up the stairs, she found that the few students and teachers still present were running out, screaming at how the roaches were now flying at them. Hannah helped out some through the nearest emergency exit, then had to keep running until she got into the car, where she could finally contemplate that the local insect population had simply gone berserk, attacking everything! So she picked the radio from her pocket and called:

"This is Lima-Papa-Metro Roosevelt, come in Dispatch. Over." (Local Protectorate Member Roosevelt).

"_This is Dispatch. Over." _And Hannah felt like facepalming: her favourite places for Assault to be were chatting with preteens, out on patrol, or sleeping on a couch. Monitor Duty: Not during a crisis! But at least he did know the codespeech, so...

"I report a situation Victor-Tango-Echo, code Orange, at Winslow High School. Over." (Situation: violent trigger event, current danger to the public.)

"_Holly fuck! Evaluation? ... Over!"_

"A two-count of Papa-Hotel-Metros, level Bravo, status Union. I request India-Echo a block around or to taste, plus a priority Alpha-Sierra med-evac. Expect massive fire ant bites. Last known location was Winslow High School, basement, inside the room with the broken door. And tell the guys to improvise bee-keeper suits, even if they have to duct-tape themselves into their fatigues and respirators. Over." (Two parahumans, masters, visibly powerful but no mastery over humans, currently unconscious. Requests: immediate evacuation of the area, medical evacuation via Air Support-ambulance.)

"_Wait: why code Orange if status of Papa-Hotel-Metros is Union? Over." _

"The Metros have a personal status of Union, but the power remains in status Victor. Over." (Parahumans unconscious, but Master power remains Violent.)

"_We are _so_ fucked..."_

"Over?"

"_Sorry: Stay safe, Roosevelt. Over and out."_

"Not quite: please make a note that this agent requires debriefing to update the local order 2010-112, plus the profile of the person of interest. Over."

"_Noted. Anything else? Over."_

"Yes: tell the Alpha Sierra to go as high as possible on the way back: the Papa-Hotel-Metros seem to have a generous radius of effect. Over."

"Noted. Over."

"Final note: might be a good idea to perform an aggressive insecticide control on the Rig before the Alpha-Sierra comes back to base. Over and out."

"_Over and out." _

And _freaking finally_, her chauffeur made it back to the car. Wordlessly, but with her eyes smouldering, she handed him the magnetic turret and pushed him to open the door and place it on the roof. And right the moment he had the door closed and was turning the car on, a car swerved to dodge a panicking teenager and sideswiped hers before stopping into the rear fender of the next one parked in front. Hannah just facepalmed, ordered her idiotic chauffeur to monitor the PRT frequency from his earpiece, then switched her radio to the police frequency and accepted the fact that she would be a stationary monitoring station in this crisis.

And why were people panicking so badly, anyway! The insect weren't attacking: they were just swarming into the air and flying randomly, thus hitting people just as randomly! It had been five long minutes, and there were still plenty of people running around in all directions like freaking headless chickens! Were they running in circles or something? Couldn't this people just frigging choose a direction and run out to the police cordon? And what's with motorists panicking too, like they couldn't just roll up their windows against flies and the occasional roach or dragonfly? While she loved this country, she couldn't deny that her fellow Americans took idiocy to an art form!

* * *

Author's Note:

I'm aiming for a PG 15 rating, but labelling high for safety.


	2. 1,1: Lemniscate

**Chapter 1.1: Lemniscate**

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**Somewhere... Indeterminate date... Indeterminate time...**

Taylor Rose woke up being gently shaken. She tried to bat away the hand shaking her...

...but she finally noticed that she was seeing herself from a third-person perspective!

She opened her eyes, and on top of looking down at herself, she was now looking up at her sister's positively vulpine grin. She also knew her sister was feeling playful and very, very happy.

"This vision-sharing is going to take some getting used to, but I'm sure we'll manage," Zoe said, as she pulled Rose's covers off. Rose immediately shivered and made to reach down for them, but her sister was already covering her again, feeling chagrined.

Rose then replayed the last minute: she was apparently seeing through Zoe's eyes, could tell Zoe's emotions, and Zoe could feel that she had been cold.

"What in the world...!"

"I always knew I was the smart twin, Tay!" Zoe interrupted her, her grin almost hurting. "We can now thank those bitches for one thing in our lives: we triggered!"

"..." Rose opened her mouth, but couldn't really articulate anything as the implications ran through her head. A whirlwind of emotions ran through her head: disbelief, happiness, sadness... but it finally settled into one: vindication!

Zoe was simply happy, but Rose then "sent" her feeling at her. Zoe's eyes opened wide, but she then settled into the same determined frown that Rose was sporting. The same they had been sporting pretty much everyday the last six months as they stepped into Winslow. Then, as one, the two girls raised their middle fingers at the sky:

"Fuck you, Mad Child!" proclaimed Zoe... although not too loudly, as they didn't want to be heard outside the room.

"Fuck you, Ku Kux Klan poster girl!" declaimed Rose.

"And specially fuck you, Red Traitor!" continued Zoe.

"For Taylor Hebert will prevail!" they both finished the little proclamation they had sung before school everyday since they accepted Emma was gone for good. But then, they both blinked.

"I think we now need to change the last verse," opened Rose.

"Yeah: after all, today we have prevailed for good," closed Zoe.

Rose nodded her head slowly to her sister, for she too knew what a victory this was: there was no question that they would be Wards, and as Wards they would be transferred to Arcadia so fast their heads would spin.

But still... "So, are we Thinkers with some sort of sensory clairvoyance?" asked Rose.

"I think that's just part of it," Zoe replied, carefully beginning to walk backward. Rose almost immediately 'received the request' that her sis was trying to navigate through her eyes, so Rose helped her by keeping them peeled and stretching her neck up from her sitting position on the bed. Carefully, Zoe made it to the corner further from her, having dodged her own bed and a chair, and they both grinned. But then Zoe said:

"Now you see me..."

And she disappeared from view, with the faintest of pops, as well as her sensory 'broadcast' cut off. But she certainly didn't disappear from Rose's perception, though: Rose was absolutely, positively certain that her sister had gone inside her, and both of them were equal controllers of this body.

"So, some sort of puppeteer Masters?" she asked the air.

"Beats me, but right this moment I'm just happy that we triggered and don't truly care" her own lips answered.

Rose nodded at that: they could go to the PRT just knowing they had some sort of power, then they would be carefully tested to discover and map their power, or powers, and would be given the choice to enter the Protectorate or stay independent. So said the public service announcements issued by the PRT.

But then her head swivelled up outside her volition, turned at Zoe's bed, and Zoe suddenly appeared in a standing position a half-foot above the mattress. Unfortunately, Zoe hadn't expected this, landed badly and was falling off! Rose reacted on instinct, mentally reaching for her and _pulling_...

And Zoe was safe, back inside her. Rose thus turned and stared at the foot of her own bed and, focusing on the same feeling, _pushed_ her sister out... and Zoe appeared there, in a sitting position, facing her way. Zoe blinked, then jumped into her arms.

"I think we can wait till later before trying to master our powers," Rose muttered into her shoulder.

Zoe just nodded, looking slightly shaken, then she slipped into the covers and covered them both.

And while the bed was narrow, Rose was glad to share it with her sis. With her other half. With the twin that she didn't think she could be any closer to, and now a parahuman power had gleefully proven her wrong.

But the bed _really_ was narrow, though. Less than a standard single bed! So they tossed some more before coming to an unspoken agreement and Zoe spooning into her. And five minutes later, they were getting hot, so they kicked down the covers and finally were able to fall asleep.

Some time later, Taylor Rose woke up again, now roused by some noise. About a minute later, just before she would have fallen asleep again, it repeated: a muffled metal-on-metal crash, from behind her. Lifting up her head from the pillow, she noted a male orderly behind her, folding down the side rail facing this side of Zoe's previous bed, then walking down it and stepping on a pedal there. He then noted that Rose was watching him work, so he gave her a bit of a grin, as he walked to the far side and easily rolled the bed to crash on this one. He then walked up the base and apparently pushed down another pedal, to then try to shove it and find it safely locked in place. He then put the covers back on their feet, patted her foot gently, and murmured at her, conspiratorially:

"_If the doctors ask, you were the ones who pushed the beds together._"

Rose nodded at him, lifting her bandaged hand from around her still sleeping sister and giving him a thumbs up.

He then rolled an eating table into the base of the bed they were sharing, and spoke again:

"_As per parental instructions, your dinners are one Kosher and one lacto-vegetarian._"

She nodded, despite not knowing what their dad was up to. He then went to a trolley that Rose hadn't seen yet, removed two covered trays (one of them sealed in an aluminized plastic bag), placed them on the table and wheeled out of the room.

Rose laid her head down again behind her sis and tried to catch another nap, but then noted some oddities: yes; her sister and her had fallen asleep with Zoe firmly wedged into her and they had woken up with Zoe still firmly wedged into her; nevertheless, they had fallen asleep facing right, toward Zoe's previous bed and the window, not left, toward the bathroom and the door. Furthermore, she was currently flexing the foot the orderly had touched: one that felt like hers, moved like hers, yet wasn't connected to her body.

Experimentally, Rose moved both their bodies into rolling, with Zoe seamlessly rolling on top of her and both ending between the two beds, facing the window. Rose then continued the movement, rolling with now Zoe on the bottom, and they came to face their dinner from the far side of Zoe's bed.

Although, Zoe began rousing from the slight squishing. Rose made her body roll to face her (something that seemingly made Zoe wake up much faster, as Rose felt resistance), and Rose then pushed forward, taking her hands before her sis could panic or something.

Besides, Rose loved watching how cute her sis' face looked behind a nimbus of their black, curly hair. Honestly, she felt it was a guilty pleasure to baby her sister at times, despite how much each of them despised being babied unless they were sick or really drowsy. Plus, if she had to be honest with herself, a slight bit of narcissism, as she could never quite create the effect in the mirror.

She felt Zoe pay attention through her senses and let her be welcome to it. Zoe's lax face then contracted into a childish pout, which made Rose giggle. Zoe's pout immediately broke into a chuckle as Rose covered her mouth, and Zoe spoke through Rose's mouth:

"Look who sounds childish!" Which was, of course, spoken with as high a voice as either of them could make.

"Look who look's childish!" Said Rose back, through Zoe's lips, while she brought Zoe's thumb into Zoe's mouth.

Zoe was a good sport, though, and sucked it a couple times before she opened her eyes and they both chuckled.

"Now Zoe, do you trust your best sis?" Rose asked, also mentally sending forward a mental request as to what she meant: let go of her muscles.

Zoe had opened her mouth to ask for context, but got hit with the request and just nodded and slumped down into the bed. Rose took her "strings" and first made her roll at her and resume their spooning position, then she took control of their eight limbs and agilely made them both roll, firmly wedged together, through the width of the two beds. And closed by saying a mental thanks at her sis.

Zoe sat up grinning ear to ear, with Rose rising a heartbeat later. Zoe scooted to turn around, and they hugged fiercely... and almost immediately disengaged, due to their painful state. They thus tried to hug much more gently, and remained like that for more than a few heartbeats.

And they then disengaged, and began looking at each other... and at themselves through each other: this sensation-sharing power was simply weird! Rose looked at Zoe, but also looked through Zoe's eyes, who was in turn looking at herself through her own eyes. But, if Rose had to be totally honest, the real weird factor was that the multitasking was coming along like they had been born for it. Thus Rose said what most people who knew parahumans said: "Sure they rock, but powers are weird."

"Uhum..." answered Zoe noncommittally, sending back the fact that she was rather... _distracted..._ by the sight that both of them were: Zoe's arms were bandaged with this painted-on, skin-coloured bandage, covered from her fingertips almost into the shoulders of her shoulderless hospital gown. Meanwhile, Rose's bandage was painted from her scalp to losing itself inside her robe, while her arms were uncovered and just fine. Truth be told, the bandage colour being so close to their skin tone, yet being glossy and obviously brushed on (a fact easy to see around her lips), made it look downright uncanny.

But Zoe then smelled a whiff from the trays, Rose's own stomach decided to growl in approval, they both chuckled and opened or unwrapped their dinners.

And Zoe made the obvious question: "What's up with the weird meals, anyway?"

Rose just had to chuckle again, but she had had some time to think and came up with a possible explanation: "I think Dad tried to ask non-standard menu options, meaning for us to have more chances at getting at least half a decent meal each."

And, if that had been their Dad's objective, it had been successful: while the "tofu-&-beans stir-fry with grilled cheese sandwich" had been okay (if a little bland), the "Kosher burger with fries" had been downright disastrous: the bread was chewy, the veggies were wilted, the fries were soggy and the patty was so incredibly overcooked that it was crunchy. But still; Danny and Annette Rose Hebert had raised good girls, who were also smart enough to know that the hospital wouldn't replace the burger with something else, so they first enjoyed to share the stir fry, then stuffed the grilled cheese sandwich into the kosher burger and made it somewhat palatable. And then pushed it all down with the provided bottles of what turned out to be prune juice. What the heck, Dad!

And they then explored their room, and found a TV remote despite them not having a TV. Zoe still decided to idly play with it, which resulted in a wall panel sliding out, revealing a TV. Joy! So they then settled themselves back on their bed, and wandered onto a documentary about the history of chocolate...

* * *

A few documentaries later, out of what turned out to be the Mexico Travel Channel, somebody gave a firm knock to their door, then opened it after a few heartbeats. It turned out to be the same orderly, leading in their dad.

And Dad looked so tired, so wilted, but he managed to bring himself to smile at them, then let them pull him onto the bed, then put him in the middle so Zoe could jump across him, and Rose could lay her body on his right, her head on the right side of his chest, while her sis could lay herself on his left.

They may be getting a little too old to do things like this, but hearing Dad's heartbeat and feeling his arms lain protectively down their backs was... reassuring. Too bad they never knew what to do with the middle arms, but whatever!

But then, the orderly had to break the moment: he coughed to get their attention, then spoke up.

"I'm sorry, but I must also inform you that Director Piggot had requested to be notified as soon as a relative was present, so she could make her way down to meet you. Therefore, she could arrive any minute now."

And he then made his exit, leaving the door ajar. But he returned moments later, wheeling in a trolley loaded with folding chairs, a kiddy table and a coffee service. He placed down the table, then placed the coffee service on it, arranged the four folding chairs around it, then picked up the food trays and actually closed the door after him.

The Heberts made their way to the chairs, but didn't yet touch the coffee.

Zoe and Rose conversed with looks, about breaking the ice before the silence turned uncomfortable. But Dad won, reaching out, grabbing their chairs and pulling them around his. They thus leaned in, pressed their ears on his chest again, and Zoe opened:

"What do you know, Dad?" she asked.

"Next to nothing, Tay-Tay," he replied, gently rubbing their shoulders. "All I know is that I was at work, then a PRT car arrived to pick me up and bring me to you. But it then drove me to its HQ, where I was first put through a ridiculous series of tests that they said was to make sure I wasn't influenced by any parahuman master. Then I was left forgotten in a waiting room for an hour before somebody showed me to the boat coming here to the Protectorate rig. And I was then briskly shown my way here. And all they ever told me was that you two were very close to the centre of a huge parahuman-related phenomenon, yet that you two were fine."

"Well Dad... we weren't near the centre... we must have been dead centre... because we triggered."

The twins then blinked at each other: that twin-speech had come out better than if they had been rehearsing it!

And Danny peeled them off his chest enough to be able to see their faces, looking as surprised as they felt. But he then shrugged, pressed them back into his chest and sighed.

"The sky is blue. The water is wet. And joke's on me for all the years calling you "Tay-Tay" as a plural."

"That was never a joke, Dad... we've always loved that nickname... as much as we ever loved to curl up on your chest and fall asleep there... if anything, the joke's on us... for always insisting on being conjoined twins every Halloween... and then when Mom made us that superhero costume... and we insisted on wearing variations of it for three or four years straight... Do you remember what name we chose, Dad?"

"Four years straight, Tay-Tay; you wore variations of your Maxima costume from age eight to eleven," he said, then placing a kiss on each of their heads. "We bought you two pumpkin costumes at age four, yet you two insisted on stuffing yourselves into a single one. Next year, you two somehow managed to stuff yourselves into a single witch dress, and we had to cut it away from you later. At age six, we accepted the trend and bought you princess dresses, and Annette merged the skirts sideways before you two managed to ruin them. At age seven Annette bought a blue and a red bodysuits, sew Velcro all over them and told you you were two sides of a magnet. And finally, at age eight, she bought you grey unitards, painted your remaining skin with grey greasepaint, then tied you back-to-front with a purple one-piece."

"Yeah, we remember that one... and the magnets... and that one Mom called Princess Erroria... and we've seen the previous photographs..."

KNOCK-KNOCK

All three jumped.

"Come in!", called Dad, while they sat up and composed themselves, but then looked a each other and stood up. In came an armoured trooper, who immediately clamoured "Parahuman Response Team, East-North-East branch, Director Emily Piggot!"

He then took post by the door and let in a tired-looking woman in officer uniform, with clearly brawny shoulders and arms seemingly trying to overcompensate for her rail thin legs and sickly, Gray-on-red skin tone. The lady glowered at his opaque mask, but he just puffed his chest and bowed at her.

After her, marched in another trooper, who promptly kicked the first one in the shin before taking post on the other side of the door, and a technician, this last one carrying underarm a plastic shoebox with a power switch, what looked like surface-mounted microphones and a row of tiny light bulbs on top. The tech just made space on the table, dropped the shoebox and, with an acknowledgement to the officer, walked out.

The officer then walked forward and nodded at them in greeting, to then wave them to sit down as she sat down opposite them. Danny silently served the four coffee cups, and while the twins added sugar and cream to theirs, the officer just used hers to moisten a cookie.

Moments later, they were all staring around in uncomfortable silence. This evidently didn't please the worn officer, who broke the ice:

"Well, while my doctor would be glad to hear I took an hour to do nothing but sip coffee in silence, I will need to be back at my office in fifteen minutes time. Therefore, I wish to move this meeting along. Would that be agreeable with you?"

The Heberts could only nod at that. The lady thus nodded back and patted the shoebox:

"This here is a desktop, graphical, voice stress analyzer. It is in fact one of the first that our own Armsmaster ever built, some fifteen years ago. I brought it here because I have found that it speeds these proceedings significantly, letting you know that I cannot lie to you, any more than you could to yourselves or me. So, with your permission, I would want to turn it on."

Dad turned at each of them in turn and put his hands on their shoulders, putting the decision at their feet. They thus felt like trying something with their power, and discovered they could literally open their feelings to each others' perusal. Rose found Zoe to be strongly curious and unafraid for herself, but afraid for Rose. And Zoe found pretty much the same feelings in her. They thus, in a smooth movement, reached across the coffee table and gently bonked each other, and Zoe then reached at the machine and flicked it on.

The machine had a quick power-on routine: the whole row of like a dozen bulbs flicked on, then they scanned through its semaphore-coloured bulbs a few times, then the machine dinged and buzzed in turn, and the green and red bulbs at the ends lit up and stayed on.

"_This means that the machine is on standby," _explained the director, muttering above the machine. "_For it to read reliably, you must speak earnestly, and speak at it. Now look down so I can demonstrate it." _And she then changed her tone, leaning down and speaking clearly: "My name is Director Emily Piggot."

And the two lights disappeared, replaced by a single one left blinking, close to the green but not quite there.

"_As you can see, this machine is quite earnest, thus detecting that I don't think of myself as Director Emily Piggot. Now let's try again:_ I consider my name to be Emily Piggot."

And DING went the machine.

"A_nd I also recommend that you think of it as 'going high' or 'going low' on the truth measurement,_" she explained. "_That saves some headaches." _

The director thus gestured at Dad, who took his turn:

"My name is Darth Vader."

BUZZ!

"My name is Daniel Francis Hebert."

And it went high, but not quite there.

"My name is Danny Hebert."

DING!

Zoe took the next turn:

"My name is Taylor Zoe Hebert."

Danny saw the light go high, but no cookie. Zoe didn't act surprised, though, and tried again with almost no pause:

"My name is Taylor Zoe-Rose Hebert."

DING!

"And mine is Taylor Rose-Zoe Hebert," cut in Rose.

DING!

"And my name is Tay," both put in, looking up at Dad.

DING!

"And mine is Dad," he said, pulling them in.

DING!

"Ehh-Ehmm," Piggot cleared her throat. "_While heart-warming, I need to move this meeting along. I can lend you the device afterwards."_

The three separated, chastised. She leaned down to speak at the machine, but kept looking up at them.

"Now, you do not have PRT security clearance..." DING "...so I can't speak freely to you about PRT activities..." DING "...but I believe you currently understand that this machine is far too literal..." DING"...and thus won't ding unless I am revealing confidential information." DING.

Thus the director sipped a little coffee and began speaking at the machine, one phrase at a time:

"Today at fifteen-thirty hours, " DING "...roughly seven hours ago," High-yellow "...a PRT special agent was conducting an investigation in the vicinity of Winslow High School," High went the light. "...then detected a trigger event," DING "...located you in the school basement by going through a door that had been secured from the outside..." DING "...but couldn't attempt to rescue you at that moment due to a cloud of insects surging at her and making her fear for her own safety and the safety of the school at large." DING "I know the operative and would trust her with my life..." High went the light. "And if she says that she had to abandon you to save the school, I trust her." DING. "But she did radio in your location and the situation..." DING "As soon as she could..." DING "...allowing you to be retrieved as soon as a rapid response team could improvise insect-proof suits..." DING

"Wait, Wait!" exclaimed Dad. "Did you say my girls were locked in the basement!?"

"Yes, they were." DING. "By the report of the special agent, she had to destroy the door in question," DING "...and her only glimpse at you had you in a small room," DING "...in the dark," DING "...on the floor," DING "...apparently having seizures," DING "...and possibly tied to each other." DING "The follow up that actually secured you then reported that there were two crude bucket traps containing fire ants on the room with you, one of which you tipped..." DING "And you were tied to each other with zip ties..." DING "...gagged with duct tape..." DING "...and bloodwork on you showed an unknown chlorine compound on your system, which further analysis showed to be chloroform." DING

Their Dad was left gaping.

"And, of course, you were both covered in fire ant bites," DING "...but your low reaction so far seems to indicate that, on top of your Master power over bugs," DING "...you must have unusual levels of mundane immunity or some very weak parahuman self-healing."

And the director blinked at the missing ding, to see that the last bulb prior to the green was blinking. She scowled at the offending machine.

"Of course, this clunker here doesn't give positives unless you can point a finger at your exact answer." DING

But Dad finally managed to reboot his brain: "Wait-Wait! Pause everything! And girls: why where you in that basement?" He half-shouted, ending giving them hard glances and pointing at the machine.

The twins wilted under his gaze, then 'hugged' mentally, opened their mouths and... just gaped, knowing that the machine would not let them be deceitful. They were left like that for long seconds until they both sighed...

And blinked at how the machine measured the sigh almost into the green.

"_I believe the words you are looking for, ladies, is 'We are being bullied',"_ the director interjected.

The girls just nodded, defeated.

"_You have to say them_."

"We are being bullied," they thus intoned.

The machine measured upward.

"We have been bullied for three semesters and counting."

Almost there...

"When we returned from Nature Camp, Emma was bat-shit crazy..." DING "...and from day one lead the pack to make sure we didn't have a moment's peace."

DING!

"_And you can extract a full confession from your daughters later, Mr. Hebert," _cut the director in. "_As of this moment, I must explain to you the parahuman version of the facts of life, then be off myself."_

She took a generous sip of her cooling coffee, then began speaking at the machine:

"Your trigger event was most public, so your real identities are, as of now, in great jeopardy." DING "While as of my tenure in this office, the local PRT does not believe in hard recruitment tactics..." DING "...The world at large will not allow you to be either independent heroes or rogues." DING "As of this moment, we believe that a third of the Empire Eighty-Eight known capes are some description of conscripts." High-yellow. "We believe they have a hostage or similar to use against Purity." High-yellow. "Night and Fog are child soldiers." DING "Crusader we know his identity, and know that he grew up and triggered under severe neglect..." DING "...and we believe he's only inside due to him following Purity around." High-yellow "And Rune we believe to have been offered to the Empire by neo-nazi relatives..." High-yellow "...and is chaffing at the bit." DING

She took another sip.

"So, today I invite you, Zoe-Rose and Rose-Zoe Hebert, to join into the Wards program." DING "As minors, I can guarantee you that it will be the best paid, part time job that a minor can obtain." Almost green. "At least legally..." DING "...with a stipend of twelve hundred a month plus room, board and expenses," DING "...plus a yearly lump payment of fifty thousand into your trust accounts." DING "And last but not least, unlike the Empire, we will accept your resignation if you ever decide to present it." DING

She then turned to address Dad: "And Mr. Hebert: I guarantee you that, as a government organization employing minors, we strive to keep them out of danger." DING "And even when they age out of the Wards program and enter the Protectorate, they will continue to have options of non-combat roles rather than combat oriented ones." DING

She then took a longer gulp from her coffee.

"And finally: your choices as to how to secure your continuing freedom: other than joining the Wards Program, locally, you could enter New Wave, or very quietly get your names changed and move across the country." High-yellow "It is my opinion that capes living without masks constitutes a reckless experiment;" DING "...one that proved its worthlessness with Fleur's death," DING "...and specially one that should have never included children." DING "Armour and powers protect you, but the mask protects your loved ones." DING "I believe that secret identities have a reason to be, and the PRT stands behind every member of the Protectorate so they can have the freedom to lead a peaceful life outside the office." DING "And finally, as to your option of moving away and disappearing into obscurity: I first advise haste..." DING "... and I wish you good luck, because you will need it." DING

She then flicked the device off.

"As of now, you are informed of your options, or lack thereof. Still, I do not wish to push too hard and possibly push you away. Therefore, tomorrow morning you will go on the oh-eight-hundred ferry so you can be delivered to your home, along with this device, and I ask that you return it in one week's time, along with your answer, to my offices at the PRT building downtown. In the mean time, I strongly encourage you girls to avoid being seen leaving your home, so wear full facial bandages and wholly covering garments if you do need to go out, and you, Mr. Hebert, will be provided with a slip from Brockton General regarding the strong anaphylactic reaction suffered by your daughters, including a recommendation for bed rest."

Without ado, she drained the remainder of her cup, stood up, muttered a farewell and left.

* * *

Once the woman left, Danny and his family were left staring at her wake.

Just to have something to do, Danny picked up his still full, and currently lukewarm cup of coffee, and began drinking it. And watched his girls, who were looking at each other, but their eyes actually seemed... unfocused.

He guessed it was some aspect of the power that was making them talk whole paragraphs in "twin-speech". He imagined they were indeed having a lengthy conversation at the moment, and didn't want to interrupt them, or at least not at the moment. So he kept sipping this sock-water of a coffee. And then drained half of each of their cups into his, considering that his girls weren't much into drinking coffee for other than breakfast. He noted their expressions had slowly descended to thoughtful frowns. And finally, after he had drank most of his refilled cup, he saw his girls blink and shake their heads.

"So, was that a conversation that you were having, Tay-Tay?"

"No, Dad..." One started, to be followed by the other. "...it's that we hadn't noticed that we could sense bugs... and use the bug's senses as well... We were riding the senses of the local population... not a lot: they seem to have been using lots of pesticides... so we could barely find some in knocks and crannies... and some up in the air, which we think are flies and such being dragged over the sea by the wind... but we then made an effort to look for more and 'clicked' and connected to some sea life... clams or something hanging under the rig's two hulls... we think it is a squid... and some crabs hanging onto some floating algae..."

* * *

_Author's note: I know it seems too soon for them to be awake. It isn't: QA is now connected to two brains, not just one. _


	3. 1,2: Benzene Electron Cloud

**Chapter 1.2: Benzene Electron Cloud**

* * *

**Tuesday March 8, 2011; a little after noon; Hebert household.**

**(Zoe & Rose)**

CLICK

After turning off the lie detector, Dad walked around the coffee table, pulled them to their feet and hugged them against his chest. Zoe and Rose were just too happy to meet their Dad halfway and hug him. Even if they still didn't know what to do with their middle arms, and had to shift a little before Rose hugged Dad, then Zoe hugged Rose.

"So see you for dinner, Tay-Tay." Dad said between their necks. "And try not to teleport yourselves into a wall or something."

"We won't, Dad... even if we wanted... we must have some Manton limit... to keep us safe from self-harm."

They were indeed getting used to their new-and-improved twin-speech. Dad too, as he didn't try to push them away to be able to see their faces.

"Then find it, girls," he said into their shoulders. "Test yourselves, train hard and be darn sure where your limits lay," he said, squeezing them almost painfully. "Your old man doesn't need to see more tragedies."

His head might have been between theirs, but the supertwins could still look into each others' minds and see the subtext: _Don't be overconfident. Don't go offing yourselves like your mother_. And it would be accurate: while Dad was religious about the OSHA rulebook, safety equipment and safe practices, Mom would only bother if he was there to nag her. Thankfully, the girls had taken after him (or been burnt by him with photographs of job-related accidents), so they had their seatbelts on in the back seat, and had walked away from the rollover. Mom... hadn't. Therefore, the twins did nothing but be good girls, nod into his shoulders and try to squeeze him back.

Slowly, he let them go, and then walked out. Through the curtain, they saw him begin walking up the street, toward the nearest bus stop.

And with him finally gone, they sighed. This morning had been... hard: As soon as the PRT had delivered them home (in an unmarked sedan), Dad had sat them down around the lie detector, then had asked them, point-blank, why they had never talked to him about the bullying.

Even to themselves, it had been surprising: they didn't really know why they had never told him! But repeated tries, explorations with the lie detector helped them construct the truth: at first, they had been waiting for Emma to pull her head out of Sophia's arse, but later, it had become something of a matter of pride to not give in.

But that was over, now that the twins had promised to be much more open with their dad.

And speaking about promises, it was time to start practising. Which they did after a toilet break made rather bizarre by their entwined senses.

_'So...'_ Zoe opened, mentalizing at her twin once they were both back at their living room. _'How do we get started?'_

_'Dunno.' _Rose replied, shrugging._ 'Jump into me, then we start practising jumping all around?'_

_'I guess so,'_ replied Zoe, to then jump into Rose. They then turned to face the kitchen, were Zoe appeared, and Rose then disappeared from the entrance hall.

Zoe turned to look at the dinning room, then Rose appeared there, and Zoe disappeared from the kitchen.

Rose turned to face the living room, and Zoe appeared there, and Rose disappeared.

_'Now lets try the next step without looking,'_ one of them thought, and Zoe's body turned to face the kitchen while they both tried to send Rose back to the entrance.

Took them a minute to accept that it wouldn't work. Zoe then had a minute glimpse of the entrance, faced away again, and Rose appeared there.

"Okay: first limitation..." opened Rose.

"...line of sight: we need to have perfect confidence before being able to jump." close Zoe.

They both frowned.

"I'm getting a notebook from our bedroom." said Rose.

"K," replied Zoe, who went to sit down on the dinning room's table, then concentrated on seeing through Rose's eyes, who had quickly found a legal pad and a pen, then jumped into her, and out again, sitting down by her.

Zoe leaned over her sister's shoulder to see the pad, but then thought about it and just jumped in.

"Well, at least we know that..." "...to jump in, we don't seem to need line of sight." they commented, as they uncapped their pen and began writing.

**Observations about Thinker/Mover power:**

**To jump out, we need line of sight. Is this a valid Manton Limit?**

**To jump in, we don't.**

"_Let me test something I think we did in the hospital: can you appear on the other side of the table, facing away and with your hands up?_"

And Zoe appeared on the other side of the table, hands up, facing away from Rose.

Rose then disappeared and appeared in front of Zoe, facing her and with her hands up. They promptly had a high-ten, and returned to the pad:

**We can apparently control both the location and position of the body that jumps out. **

They thought for a few moments...

"Range?" they both interjected.

"Attic..." opened Rose.

"Basement," closed Zoe.

And soon enough, they went there, Zoe jumped up at Rose, and then the two of them used their jumps to return downstairs: far-side of the attic to next to the staircase, then down the folding stairs, then down the upper story hallway, then down the stairs, then into the living room, and back to the dining table. And by making the new body appear facing the direction of the next jump, they managed to jump like once per second or so.

**By controlling the position of the outgoing body, we can save time between jumps. Depending on range of the jump-outs, we could perhaps move around very fast. **

**Mirrors...**

The girls then went to the entrance hall and removed a large mirror from the wall, which they then positioned in the kitchen's floor so they could see the entrance from the dining room. And then they tried...

**Mirrors can be used to extend range of line-of-sight. Bummer that we can't test if cameras can be used the same way. Will have to ask Dad if we can try in the DWU's security room. **

They then brainstormed for a bit for other tests they could try inside their home, and found one:

**The jump-out seems to constitute a real teleportation, considering that we can jump through glass, or through a keyhole. **

And then they ran dry and decided to practise jump speed, which they did until they felt a little hungry and had to stop for lunch. Which then lead to an embarrassing discovery, about an hour later:

**When eating, we need to divide into two bodies and eat two meals. Eating in one body only benefits the outer body.**

And, well, they pretty much ran out of ideas for tests to do indoors, so they then tried to train their jumping speed: they just faced each other from opposite ends of the living room and one jumped at the other, then back at her starting position, then the other would do the same.

They got their "flickering" down to what had to be two jumps per second, when the floor randomly creaked under Zoe's feet, she glanced down and missed her turn, and then both Zoe and Rose tried to jump at each other...

They both appeared in the middle of the room, falling sideways.

And once they found themselves on the floor, stunned, they tried to roll away from each other, couldn't, and looked down...

"Aaaaaahhhhh!" "Aaaaaahhhhhhh!" "Aaaaahhhh!" they screamed, and kept screaming, while trying to shove the other away, or to pull away from the other. It was futile, though, as their bellies were fused together!

Thankfully, they were smart ones, so it didn't take _that_ long for them to stop screaming in response to being screamed at...

After helping each other to kneel up, they finally noticed they were naked! Looking around, they each spotted their respective empty clothes on opposite sides of the room and, not consciously, they repeated what they had been doing all day and just _willed _to be _over there!_

And so, each of them found themselves kneeling by their respective clothes. They each blinked in surprise, then shock their heads and hastily dressed up, while conversing on their heads...

_'So, were we...' _

_'Conjoined? Yeah, I think we were.' _

_'Was that trakiaphagus?' _

_'Trakia means neck. Don't remember the word, but it comes from the Greek for bellybutton.' _

_'Omfalo?'_

_'Yeah: omfalophagus!'_

_'But being conjoined like that is no fun!'_

_'At all! Our knees just colliding together! We wouldn't have been able to run at all like that. Aren't all powers supposed to somehow be beneficial to the parahuman in question?'_

_'Mmph... perhaps it was us who screwed up?'_

_'We have to practice that aspect then, too...'_

_'Find how is it beneficial...'_

But then, the twins looked around themselves. Rose eyed the kitchen's outer door, Zoe eyed the front door, and both paled at the shared mental image of again ending up on the floor, naked and stunned, and their father walking in...

"Bedroom!" they both cried, and then they scurried upstairs and into their room.

And, for good measure, then laid on the bed a couple of their old nightshirts, got naked and moved to opposite sides of their bed.

"So, three... two... one..." they chorused, then jumped, and both appeared in the centre of the bed, once again off centre and falling.

They expected it this time, though, so they didn't start to scream or push each other away. Not that it would have helped them at all, though, considering that their rib cages were fused front-to-front, and more than looking down, they had to awkwardly stretch their necks to be able to look down the other's back.

At least they now had some separation between their hips, though, so kneeling up wasn't as hard as the previous conjoinment. They then eyed opposite sides of the bed, jumped out, and were out.

"Chest conjoinment is out as well, then," observed Rose.

"Yeah. Probably we crash in the position that we are standing before jumping," added Zoe.

"K. Let's test that: we crash buttocks first!"

"Yeah!"

And they both turned away, tried and... couldn't jump.

"Line of sight!" they both observed, frowning. But then Zoe looked at their mirror, and through her eyes, both of them could see the space between them...

"Three... Two... One..."

And they jumped, and found themselves falling again. Thankfully, they actually caught themselves before they had actually fallen down.

It took them but a moment to coordinate and be able to walk on their opposing pairs of legs. They didn't quite have the confidence to jump down, though, but they did trust each other implicitly, so they didn't really hesitate as they both squatted at once, then they both shifted their weight on Zoe, Rose stretched her two legs toward the floor, they both shifted their weight to Rose and then she carried Zoe on a reverse-piggyback for two steps before Zoe stretched her own legs out and landed.

They then took stock of their last five seconds, noticed that they had done all of that like they practised circus arts everyday, and gaped for a second before they muttered in unison: "powers are bullshit".

Experimentally, Zoe thought about trying a double-legged high kick, and Rose immediately shifted her weight to allow her sister to raise both her legs at once, then stretch them at head height. And then Zoe landed and whipped sideways, with Rose then doing an unpractised, but serviceable spinning double kick; for the two of them to then land on back-to-back horse karate stances.

"Back-to-back seems to work..." observed Zoe.

"Probably not for running, but it should do if we end up cornered." muttered Rose, as they then walked to the base of their bed and jumped apart, again to their starting positions.

But Zoe then jumped at Rose, then jumped out in front of her, and both took seats on Rose's side of the bed. They scooted closer, pressed their hips together, "three... two... one...", and jumped.

It took them less than a minute to discard having two torsos on a single pair of legs, though: first, their torsos were set on weird Y angles, and second, their sole pair of legs obviously had to work twice as hard to carry two torsos.

"But then..." "even if this doesn't work on the field, it should be amazing for treadmill training." they observed, and made a note of that before moving on to the next option.

Hugging their torsos sideways while keeping their hips apart resulted on them having their two heads on a single torso, but this torso then widening and having two pairs of legs side by side.

"This should do for running speed!"

"Definitely!"

They shared grins, but had to separate five minutes later because they quickly found out that neither of their nightshirts could slip on their absolutely huge hips, and couldn't figure out how to test their theoretically improved running speed inside their room.

Next, they pressed their whole bodies sideways, jumped, and found themselves a perfect dicephalic conjoinment: a single body, just a little wide on the shoulders, topped with their two heads.

They grinned at each other, but then their alarm clock went off, as they had set it to remind them to cook dinner.

"Practical test?" "Sure!"

* * *

An hour later, they believed they knew were they stood with the two-headed body: due to them still having two spines, their waist had zero lateral flexibility and they were forced to either waddle or walk as rigidly as a if they were on the nonexistent Winslow marching band. And they weren't any stronger, either. In fact, they were getting ready to separate when their dad arrived and found them like that.

"That's new..." he said, blinking in surprise. But then shock his head and stepped closer.

"So, found this body configuration to be good?" he said, after a minute of examination.

"No, Dad;" "We aren't any stronger, we are slower and we are top-heavy." "In short, we are calling this body useless and moving on."

"Oh, but Tay-Tay; I wouldn't call that useless! Now," he said, as he stepped forward, insinuated his head through the space between theirs and pulled them into a firm, warm hug.

"See, Tay-Tay: you can both hug your old man without awkward middle arms crossing."

Resting their heads on his shoulders and returning the embrace, they finally found an advantage to this awkward body.

'_Yeah: this is an advantage.'_

'_Indeed. Say Tay: how about if we don't separate until tomorrow morning?'_

'_My pleasure, Tay!'_

And then their dad pulled away his hands and began tickling their sides.

"Another advantage," he said, "is that your old man is no longer outnumbered when he wants to tickle his giggle monsters."

And he was right about that: what followed was their best tickle war since… ever.

* * *

The chicken fajitas burned a little, but dinner still tasted glorious...

* * *

The toilet was embarrassing, but they actually found it less incongruous, far less bizarre, than what it had been the last three times: at least, unlike their previous uses, neither of them was trying to do something else (and turning green) while feeling the other defecate, nor were they subconsciously comparing while they did their thing simultaneously from two different bathrooms.

Showering was strange too, but for all of the wrong reasons. For one thing, they always showered together if they could help it, as it was much faster to have four hands to lather your hair and wash your back. But now they had two heads to lather with only two hands, no other sister to wash their back, and found themselves competing for the rather narrow beam of the showerhead.

"_I saw we try to not shower while conjoined,"_ said Rose, as they awkwardly washed their 'down there'.

"_Agreed",_ replied Zoe, equally uncomfortable.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, though, they were finding their new body to be almost luxurious for sleeping: all the benefits of hugging your best sister to sleep, without the discomfort of crushing two of their arms against the mattress. Furthermore, while their heads were a little too close for them to even properly turn their two heads inwards, they were also at the perfect distance for them to comfortably keep their cheeks pressed together.

* * *

**Wednesday March 9, 2011**

Over breakfast, still not having changed back, they asked their Dad to make the call.

"Not yet", he objected. "We were given several days, and while I definitely want you in the Wards, I want you to use up the time; master your powers as much as possible."

He then stood up, walked around the table and kissed the crown of their heads.

"Now hurry up to get ready," he said, taking the dishes to the sink. "I had a huge revelation last night about your powers, and I want to drop you at the library to ponder it."

Ten minutes later, having dressed and applied the burn cream and bandages, they were boarding the truck.

"Okay Tay-Tay, please list me your known powers," he asked.

"Well, we can use each others senses... we can move each others body... we can teleport at each other... or from there teleport forward... and we are aware of where bugs are and... can make them move."

"Well, if no other uses crop up, I see that you can get in and out of secured places; you can easily monitor each other, help the other multitask and even rescue the other if she was unconscious, and can use insects to carry microphones and to create distractions. My revelation was that, rather than your power being one for superheroes, is a much better fit for super spies."

They opened their mouths, but no words came out.

"Now," he continued, "Ponder on that for two or three days, and see you at my office for lunch."

* * *

As it was, they couldn't fault their Dad's logic: over the next few days they learned to mix clusters of insects so to mix their senses and be able to eavesdrop, and also came up with pocking eyes and stuffing mouths with flying insects, taking blood samples with mosquitoes and doing general search and rescue with crawlies, but no directly heroic uses.

Something fortuitous they found Thursday evening, though, was that their insect sense went out fifty percent further if they only had one head. So, that night they watched how three blocks away, in an apparently normal house, two men took turns making love to the same woman.

* * *

By Friday they were completely sold on the super spy idea, and accompanied their Dad to the DWA to draw up costume ideas.

By mid morning, though, they found a significant distraction: just for the sake of resting their heads, they closed their notes and jumped together to amplify their insect sense.

"Hey, Dad," they said. "Are your guys doing something two hundred and fifty yards that way?" They said, pointing through the wall.

"Yes, Tay: we just got permission from City Hall to open an abandoned warehouse that way. It hasn't been opened in almost fifteen years, but it's supposed to have some mothballed construction equipment. In exchange for City Hall donating us the building, Brockton Bay Public Works gets half of the serviceable equipment."

"Well Dad; we are seeing your cluster of yellow clothed guys in front of it, but the doors aren't open yet and there's a half dozen people already inside, sitting behind crates around the door."

Danny froze.

"It's a trap, Dad."

Danny then exploded into activity: he jumped off his desk, jumped at his radio and turned it on.

"Ramirez, Danny Hebert here, do you copy? Over." he said, trying not to sound panicked.

"_Ramirez here, boss", _the supervisor said. "_We are way behind schedule with the warehouse. Either the door is literally welded shut, or there's something really heavy holding it shut. Miller's just got started with a cutting torch. Over."_

"Stand down, Ramirez", Danny said. "I'm getting a really bad feeling about that job. Ram the gate with a front loader or something, and call Security and tell them to surround the building. Over."

"_Stopping the operation, boss. Over."_

Through insect eyes, the Taylors saw that one of the yellow blots had indeed gone forward and made the blot near the door step back.

"They've stopped, Dad," they reported, making Danny stop holding his breath.

On the site, another blot, one with white hair, was asking the supervisor for his radio.

"_Issac Maddox from Public Works here. Danny, what's going on?"_

"Danny here. Merchants have ambushed us in the past. Over."

"_Merchants don't get this far into the Docks, Danny. I'm telling your guys to keep going."_

"That gate needs to go down anyway, Issac. If it's really nothing, I'm treating you guys to lunch. Over."

"_On you, then,"_ grumbled the old man, giving back the radio to the Dockworker's supervisor, who then switched channels and began making things happen.

* * *

It took ten minutes to get the building surrounded by Dockworkers Security, then another fifteen to procure a container-grade forklift, duct-tape three riot shields around its cabin and drive it to the site. And five more while the police arrived for the just-in-case. It then took five seconds for the vehicle to ram its tines under the gate and lift it with a deafening squeal.

Out of eight guns on the Merchants, only four shots rang. The Taylors hadn't wasted the time, making every flying insect within a hundred yards converge into the position, then selecting the smaller ones and making them crawl into the guns and jam themselves on anything that might be a moving piece, then selecting flies to pack themselves into the barrels, and keeping the roaches in reserve to pounce at eyes, ears and mouths as soon as the attack started.

Police pounced as soon as the first shot fired, and then quickly subdued the six Merchants.

"All have been subdued, Dad", they reported to him. He nodded back and held them tight. The police would now waste a half hour seeking other possible attackers, but they couldn't say anything and risk giving themselves away.

* * *

That weekend, in a BBQ held to their Dad's honour, the twins saw their dad receive a bullet set on a plaque. It had been recovered from inside one of the forklift tires. It became their first memento as heroes.

* * *

_Author's note: :-)_


	4. 1,C: N2H4

**Interlude 1.C: N2H4**

* * *

**Monday March 14, 2011, 1035hrs, on the parking lot outside a supermarket three blocks south from Winslow High School. **

"...So now I repeat from the top:" Armsmaster declared to the two police officers and three PRT troopers who would accompany him into Winslow High (plus a high-ranking representative from the Board of Education, who would be opening the door and cutting through red tape), as he pointed at the safety glasses-like contraption on his hand.

"These devices only have two buttons: left side turns on the voice stress analysis function, and right side turns on the video and voice recorder. When the voice stress analyzer is working, you will see an image overlay of a slide ruler going from red through yellow to green, and a pointer telling us know how truthful is the speaker being. When the recorder is on, you will see a blinking red dot to a in a position close to the tip of your own noses. Also, when both are working together, the recording will include the slide ruler overlay.

"_Any questions!_" he finished, adding an additional sharpness that he hadn't added to his previous speech.

"None, sir!" rapidly replied one of the police officers.

"Good!" replied Armsmaster, extending forward the devices. "Test them on each others! We hit the road in ten minutes!"

"Sir!"

While the five men took the devices, he set up a nine-minute countdown on his HUD, and then zoned out on them while he then locked his leg and torso armour joints, flipped open the small keyboard on his left forearm, and ran a quick performance data analysis on his current bike.

Seven minutes later, his usual constipated face looked minutely uglier. _'Well, as expected, the gas turbine on Version 6.3 is indeed economically efficient, considering that I have it burning waste vegetable oil from the Rig's cafeteria, and time efficient, considering that its maintenance is largely limited to changing the lube, which I can trust to the vehicle pool mechanics. Thing is, also as expected, a turbine engine has a relatively large latency, which limits my acceleration. And I still don't know if the much improved power-to-weight ratio is paying out. I guess it is the difference between an European supercar and American Muscle: sustained performance versus peak performance. Could this then be called 'learning curve', or should I swap it out? I could add an afterburner, or perhaps some expendable rockets...' _

But then, his timer chimed, and he saved and dismissed his current spreadsheets, typed a sticky note about afterburners and possibly booster rockets, to then switch his HUD from 'office' to 'combat' mode, unlock his armour and focus back.

"_Is everybody ready now!"_ he half-shouted.

After a second, he got a"Yessir!" from one of the troopers, while the police officers took a moment to resume a normal heart rate.

"Good," he replied. "Lets roll out!"

* * *

Three minutes later, their little motorcade had stopped in front of Winslow's main entrance, and Armsmaster was following a step behind the BOE representative, who seemed to be very eager. Their group went up, at the short but eager clip afforded to them by the old lady who was so eagerly rubbing her hands together.

During the slow-going march, Armsmaster had time to eye the condition of the school: the walls were bare cinder block, looking more brown than red thanks to decades without a wash; the lockers lining the hallways looking so much better than the walls thanks to the generous amount of graffiti on them; the light fixtures seemed to be missing one of every three tubes, and the ceiling tiles were a tired-looking creamy-white with the occasional black spot of fungus for taste. The floor, though, seemed to be normal, and cleaned regularly.

Armsmaster wondered how could he help this school, and immediately came up with an idea of gutting a couple of microwave ovens and making a wand that would, if not whiten the ceiling tiles anew, would at least kill the mould that was blackening them.

But then he shock his head in disgust: while the review process would largely rubberstamp the design, neither would he have the time to volunteer to do the work himself, nor would he be able to sell, loan or even donate the wand to be used by non-parahumans...

They finally made it to the Headmistress' office, where the old lady simply pushed the door open and led them in.

"Hello, Linda," the old lady addressed the secretary within. "Could you announce Carrie that I need to speak with her immediately? _Me and only me_, darling."

The secretary nodded timidly and pressed her intercom. "Mrs Blackwell; Representative Charmichael here to see you, with urgency!"

"_Ok, Linda. Tell Lara I'll see her in ten minutes," cracked the intercom._

"And that's our cue, gentlemen," added the old lady, as she immediately made it to the office.

Armsmaster's impression of the office was _decadence_: deep carpets, every piece of furniture being polished mahogany, the wallpaper looking like silk, a desk lamp that he knew retailed for over a thousand dollars, and the woman on the deep leather seat and hastily shoving playing cards off her desk looking like she was made of plastic surgeries, jewels and elaborate hairdos. And if not through the _inefficiency_ of that, Armsmaster chose to despise her simply from the utter wrongness of finding this den of luxury at the core of this cesspit of a school.

* * *

Eighteen minutes later, as the Taser had proven very effective to subdue Shadow Stalker, he was taking great pleasure out of turning the thousand-dollar desk lamp into some improvised electric manacles. Even better, now that he knew that this disturbed child was the principal's niece. Not that he could see a shred of similarity between the two, but he guessed that adoptions and being in-laws happens.

Besides, it would off to the Birdcage with her: with at least eleven murders to her name, plus two counts of torturing somebody into Triggering, she was a better fit to the Nine than for probation.

Two minutes later, with the unconscious girl being carted out, they told the secretary to call the second girl down their list.

Two more minutes later, a very petite girl that barely looked older than Vista entered the office.

The girl took in the police, the cackling witch in the principal's chair and the visage of Armsmaster, then stiffly walked to one of the chairs in front of the desk and sat down.

"Is it time for the reckoning, madam?" she mildly asked the old lady.

"I believe it is, child."

She sighed.

"Here," she said, producing a thumb drive from her purse. "Folder 'Elementary school stuff', then folder 'I failed math', you'll find a diary with every bit of bullying I have participated in, witnessed or heard about from my second month here, once I noticed that Sophia Hess could get away with murder as far as the school cared."

She sighed again.

"Before we begin, I'd like to make a statement," she paused to sigh again. "From my very first day here, petite, cutesy Maddy Clements was down to three options: open my legs to the jocks to gain a few protectors; kiss arse with the bullies, join the Empire, or be a petite bully magnet. I chose to survive."

"Very well, child," said the old lady, still hard but without her previous harsh edge. "Let's get this started."

"You may wish to start by the folder 'big'," the girl added, speaking at the ground. "There I put copies of every daily entry when I saw something big happening. Sophia couldn't go a day without defacing a book or stealing a lunch, but there I placed events of theft or destruction of valuables, serious humiliations and plenty of beatings and other nasty stuff that I heard her and Emma gossiping about."

Another sigh. "My very last entry was in fact about them planning to conk out the Hebert twins with chloroform, then hog tying them and leaving them in a broom closet or something. I avoid them out of school, so I don't know if they actually executed it."

* * *

**Meanwhile, at the Hebert residence...**

"That was lovely, Danny," Zoe Barnes said, sipping the last of her mimosa.

"With Annette being such a good cook, I had forgotten you too had it in you", Alan Barnes said.

"Alan!" chided Zoe. "Danny was always the one who made crepes!" she said, gesturing at the fourth place on the table, which consisted in nothing but Annette's old flute and an untouched Tequila Sunrise.

Danny nodded. "She could cook more elaborate egg dishes, but crepes were always my thing."

"Well, Danny," Alan said, sobering down his tone. "While I missed our occasional brunches here, I really want you to tells us why you told us to drop everything and have brunch with you; on a weekday, nonetheless.

_'So it begins'_, Danny thought.

"Leave the plates; I'll deal with them later," he said, rising from the table. "If you could accompany me to the living room, we can talk there."

Danny had set up the living room for this discussion: an armchair and the love seat on opposite sides of the coffee table, which held the voice-stress analyzer and copies of his girls' bullying diary, the hospital file and the PRT statement of how they had been found.

* * *

An hour later, Danny was washing dishes while Zoe yelled at Alan, while Alan kept screaming denial. All accentuated by the voice analyzer buzzing at every third statement of Alan. Danny was at least heartened that Zoe had been completely oblivious. Just like him.

And yet, Danny couldn't bring himself to hate Alan: not after Zoe used the analyzer to extract the alley story from him.

* * *

A little while later, the front door went shut. He went to the living room, finding Zoe weeping angry tears.

"The police called," she said. "I told him to go and fix his mess."

Danny took the still sitting Tequila Sunrise from the table and gave it to her. She took it, muttered a curse and gulped it down. She then angrily wiped the tears from her face and stood up.

"Can I move in here for a while, Danny? I think my nieces have a greater need for me than my viper back home."

"Of course, Zoe. My girls should be happy to know they still have their aunt."

* * *

A few hours later, while weary, his girls heard her excuses and did welcome her.

* * *

That night, Danny heard her weeping through the door. He then fetched his girls and told them to fetch the analyzer and talk to her.

An hour later, he went again to inspect the guest room's door, and found the sound of weepy voices, punctuated at times by the characteristic beeping of the voice-stress analyzer. Relieved, he was finally able to fall asleep.

* * *

**The next day,** he was less than surprised to find his girls had slept with their Aunty, and wouldn't let go of her.

Once the coffee reached his brain, though, he was majorly surprised to notice they were dicephalous and she was conversing to them about her job.

He guessed they had fessed up about their powers last night.

* * *

And, in the evening, he was even more surprised to come to full pantries, manicured lawn and professionally cleaned carpets and furniture.

He then got chewed up once he tried to tell Zoe that she didn't need to do that:

"Neither Annette nor I would ever tell you to leave the Dockworkers for greener pastures, for we knew you dredge up like half of their jobs nowadays. Nonetheless, you and I know that I make twice as much as you do, so I'm sure as heck going to pay rent! Are we clear, Daniel Francis Hebert?"

And then, he sublimely embarrassed himself with an automatic response that he hadn't said in two years and utterly lost him the argument: "Yes, dear."


	5. 2,1: Gravitational Lensing

**.**

* * *

**The Taylor Twins**

* * *

**Chapter 2.1: Gravitational Lensing**

* * *

**April 10, 2011, Sunday, early nighttime**

Hop out a block and then hop in... 'listen' through insects four blocks around... make 99% of all fleas let go of that dog that just came in range...

Feel the dozen beetles inside Vista's helmet warp 100 yards parallel to their own route, one block away...

Find two walking human bodies in that same alleyway... make the effort to actually distinguish sounds through bug senses... listen to a discussion about sports... radio the conversation topic to Vista so she won't stop either...

Hop out and hop in a block closer to the men...

Feel Vista nod and step forward another block...

Hop out and hop in roughly above them... swarm a few roaches onto the dog so it will wake up and leave its fleas behind...

Hop out and hop in another block... detect another dog in the same situation and make 99% of its fleas let go...

As they were rapidly learning, patrolling with Vista was efficient. Unfortunately, thought, they soon learned that their two mover powers didn't mesh well together: for one thing, they couldn't extend their range by teleporting through Vista's space-warped tunnels (thus disproving the theory that their line-of-sight limit was such, but actually had a spherical range). Secondly, while their insect-Thinker power could keep up with either the speed of travel of either Mover power, it couldn't keep up with both powers at once. And finally, the relationship was one-sided: while they could benefit (to a degree) of Vista's space warping power, they could not teleport Vista with them. Therefore, they were going parallel, with Vista warping alongside their teleport jumps.

Hop out and hop in another block... swarm the new dog...

That, or they could piggyback Vista and run through her warps, but both Vista and them had agreed to only do that when they needed to be somewhere _really fast_. While power testing had shown that, between the Taylors physicality and Missy's warping they could run at a high-subsonic speed, Missy couldn't really smooth down the road _that_ fast, meaning that it was like running cross country. Furthermore, while out of uniform Missy didn't mind being a cuddly little sister, out in the field she was the most veteran Ward and being used as a backpack was undignified damn it!

Hop out and hop in another block...

Besides, it had taken them quite a while to achieve their current relationship with the girl: to get her to compartmentalize separately that, while Ladybug would indeed treat Vista as an equal, Zoe and Rose would love to cuddle Missy.

Hop out and hop in another block... detect a whole bunch of people in an alleyway at the edge of their senses!

Buzz the ladybugs near Vista's ears to call her attention... signal her to be discreet as soon as she arrives... hop the two blocks to arrive near the bunch of people... identify that the thirteen people are walking... use the roaches from the nearby dumpster to smell them... identify the smells of whetstone oil and gunpowder... pull off her helmet camera and use it as a periscope and... identify positively that this bunch are ABB... share a nod with Vista once she has peered out of her own camera... look back and hop out one of their bodies and radio.

"Console, these are Ladybug and Vista. Do you copy? Over" Ladybug- A said into her mic.

"Ladybug, this is console. Over." replied Clockblocker, half a city away.

"We are shadowing thirteen metal lizards, walking northbound into area 13. Over." She reported in code, with lizards being ABB (followers of the Lung the Dragon), metal referring to them being armed, and "area 13" being the industrial district of the Docks.

"Understood. Console will ask the Blues and the Old Men to warm engines. Patrol is advised to not be detected, and retreat if engaged. Over."

"Copy that. Out." and she hopped back into Ladybug – B.

"_Another thing: Console advises Vista that she is about to time-out. Over."_

Vista let out a growl (which sounded much cuter than Ladybug would ever tell Vista) before radioing again.

"It's a lot of metal lizards. Vista requests overtime. Over."

"Request filed. Over," replied Clockblocker, as these requests weren't handled by them, but rather were weighted against the mission report. "Console wishes you happy stalking. Out."

"Patrol out."

Ladybug and Vista thus proceeded to follow the bunch for five more blocks of smaller streets and alleyways, until the bunch emerged into Ferguson avenue and turned east. Ladybug gestured for Vista to pause, though: she could feel some other bunches coming from all directions. And eyeing the nearby intersection with Goldsmith avenue, she could see at least twenty gangsters already gathered and waiting.

Repeating their comm procedure, Ladybug – B radioed the base:

"Console, this is Patrol. Do you copy? Over."

"Console copies. Over."

"We are spying a mayor lizard gathering at the intersection of Goldsmith with Ferguson. We sense fifty strong and growing. Over."

Vista looked at Ladybug – A and mouthed the word 'fifty' as in question, as there were only some thirty in sight. Ladybug blinked the three fireflies inside Vista's visor, which got her nodding.

"Fifty plus lizards, metal, at Goldsmith with Ferguson. Console will send the numbers upstairs. Patrol is advised to continue gathering intelligence. Over and out."

In the wait, their phone suddenly vibrated.

It was a text from Aunty Zoe:

Hey, Namesakes.

Out of milk. Buy a gallon. Could you also buy bread from that bodega near your work?

And good night.

Luv, Eponym.

They composed a quick 'ok' and stored their phone.

Console's response came after about a minute:

"Console to Patrol. Do you copy?" Came Clockblocker.

"Patrol copies," replied Ladybug.

"Console comments that Blues and Old Men will gather nearby and wait on your green light. ETA 10. Over."

"Copied that Blues and Old Men will be waiting on our signal. I'll be gathering a swarm meanwhile. Over and out".

It had taken them some mental gymnastics when the PRT decided to make them a single cape. But it certainly made sense: it would be much more PR friendly to announce them like an Oni Lee with bug control rather than a bug controller and her telepath, teleporter sister, especially after the Simurgh had so thoroughly pissed the well against telepathy in general. Furthermore, with it being well documented that twins tend to trigger together, their identities would be very easily compromised, regardless of the Unwritten Rules.

Besides, it had been fun creating a fake persona to go with the Ladybug costume. While the team and the PRT knew them to be serious, introverted bookworms, 'her' three interviews since 'her' debut last week had 'her' as a somewhat vapid fashionista, insisting a lot that it was a hazzle to now have to buy twice the food and toiletries and have to pay twice for 'her' hair and manicures, and saying that the only conveniences 'she' had found for daily life was that 'she' now had four hands for getting ready every day, and could change in and out of PE clothes in absolute record time. And how much 'she' hated having to go visit another city to be able to pretend to be twins at the mall. Add to that the long strawberry blonde wigs they had peeking under their helmets and their _very_ padded chest plates, and every cape geek in Arcadia was looking at the cheerleader types rather than the new raven-haired, flat-chested bookworms.

The costumes, though, were a nod at the underwhelming style of Miss Militia: fitted military jumpsuits, utility belts, boots, gloves, knee pads and open-faced motorcycle helmets, all-black with deep red spots, and bicycle masks to protect their identities. Glen Chambers, the PR perv, had insisted on a bright red catsuit with black polka dots and simple domino masks, but Aunty Zoe had had their back and made him back off.

Five long minutes later, well spent on both gathering a considerable swarm, walking significant portions of the same to shadows and manholes near the gathering and even stuffing flies and mosquitoes into guns, another group of five joined it. Notably, one of these newcomers was taller and shirtless and was wearing a metal mask.

"Patrol reports," said Vista, who had spent her time laboriously creating a telescope/periscope out of space distortions. "Lung has arrived at the gathering. I repeat: Lung has arrived. Over."

"_Old Men copy_," came Armsmaster response.

"_Blues copy._" Presumably from the police.

"Ladybug comments. Lung has begun briefing the gathering. Reporting in a moment. Over."

A minute later... "Ladybug reports. Lung has given the lizards a search-and-destroy mission against the villain group 'the Undersiders'. Lung is specifically ordering and insisting to kill them on sight. Over."

"_Commander Freeman here. I've heard enough. Blues inbound from the south. ETA 2 minutes. Out."_

"_Old Men inbound from the north," _came Armsmaster._ "__ETA 2 minutes. Out._"

"Vista here. Gathering has formed into groups and begun dispersing. I will attempt to close the streets east and west to prevent them from dispersing. Over."

"_You do that, Vista,"_ came Armsmaster. _"__Ladybug: deploy swarm and try to herd them north and south. If possible, both of you try to herd Lung north. And both of you stay safe. Over."_

"Vista copies," who made gestures with both hands and made two imposing 12-foot walls grow out of the pavement.

"Ladybug copies," who then teleported to a building overlooking the intersection and began boiling the swarm out of hiding and onto the gathered thugs.

For a moment, it seemed like Lung wanted to flee, but a couple of minimally risky teleports later, 'she' didn't only keep Lung interested, but also herded him north. As soon as Armsmaster came into view, though, she returned for good to the rooftops. She also momentarily noticed some people in a rooftop three blocks north, but dismissed them as they didn't seem to be doing anything. What they were on the look out for was Oni Lee, but he wasn't showing up.

Five minutes later, it was all over: out of some forty guns on ABB hands, less than ten let out a first shot and only an AK 47 managed a second; most of which were wasted against the police-tank of the BBPD's SWAT Team. Baton shots, tear gas and simple attrition dealt with them the rest of the way.

Meanwhile, half a block north, Lung had also been captured. As it turned out, Lung didn't have much of a defence against being distracted by suicidal roaches flying at his eyes, ears and mouth; allowing Armsmaster to deliver his experimental tranquilizers. Worse yet with Vista at hand, who was keeping up her walls for the normies with her left hand, while she used her right one to keep making bits of pavement around Lung rise or fall right before he stepped on them, or making columns rise and intercept every other attempt of his at throwing a punch. When he finally stumbled to the ground, she made the pavement hug him like a hot dog, allowing Miss Militia to close in and administer him a taser to the back of his head.

Once Armsmaster coordinated with BBPD to be able to give the all-clear, both Vista and Ladybug jumped down to salute Armsmaster.

"That was excellent, young ladies," he said, with his booming voice having a distinct tilt towards praise. "I'm giving you equal credit rather than an assist."

"We aim to please, sir!" Vista half-shouted.

"Email your cameras tonight, then write your reports when you clock in tomorrow. You are dismissed!" he boomed.

"Clocking out, sir!" she replied excitedly, to then grab Ladybug's hand and pull her through a short series of warps.

Before she knew what was happening, she was deposited unceremoniously on yet another gravelled rooftop, and Vista had lost her composure and had jumped into her arms, squealing in delight.

Picking up her little sister and spinning her around, Ladybug promised herself something:

_'If we ever manage the spider silk under-armour, Vista gets the very first one!' 'Totally!'_

* * *

Four minutes later, after having radioed her sign out, Ladybug was walking into a bodega just a little west from the PRT building. She greeted the kindly old lady up front, rapidly selected two half-gallon bottles of milk, two loaves of bread, paid in cash and asked for her purchases to be put into two bags, with a jug and a loaf each.

Walking out, she then produced 'her second body', handed her one bag, then each of them embraced the bags against their respective bosoms, turned north, and begun their staggered teleportation, now much faster thanks to being able to teleport through well-lit sidewalks.

Two minutes later, having arrived to their regular bus stop at a rhythm of about 150mph, they stayed in one body and began to walk leisurely in their home's general direction.

Three minutes later, she began feeling the mass of dragonfly larvae that represented the back garden's pond three doors down from home. Naturally, that particular garden was teeming with sleeping dragonfly, a dozen of which she quickly woke up, then sent into her basement through a hidden vent, then made them swarm around a lit spot around a nightlight and... one of her bodies was in. Two more teleports later, Rose and Zoe began removing their uniforms, to then one of them activate a thumb scanner hidden in the brickwork and open a camouflaged cabinet (in the blank brick wall that once housed an old coal chute) for the non-washable parts of their uniforms. The rest, of course, was put on the hamper.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, fed, showered and two-headed, the twins slipped into their bed and fell asleep, cheek to cheek.  
Their first battle had been awesome!

* * *

Author's note:

1.- No, I didn't mess up the tenses: Zoe and Rose might be two, but the PRT encourages them to think of themselves in singular when they are Ladybug. Lets just say that they are doing a little too well. The meaning of this won't be really explained until 4.2, I think.

2.- I imagine Glen Chambers' version of their costumes as that "Miraculous Ladybug" girl from French television. Mine uses the opposite colours, and rather than only covering the eyes above the shoulders, it covers everything other than the eyes.

3.- No way to explain this in story, so I'll explain it here: during the first arc, their powers were settling, and they could indeed turn on and off certain Thinker aspects of their supertwins' power. Not anymore.

4.- This is my take on an Armsmaster who did take his leadership courses seriously: he still fails at being a good leader, but he succeeds at keeping up the morale. Thus, I imagine he will also have a much better relationship with Assault, tolerating his humour rather than getting riled up.  
Furthermore, his troop's success is his, rather than feeling that he failed at being the centre of attention.


	6. 2,B: 600 yottaseconds

**.**

* * *

**The Taylor Twins 2.B**

* * *

**600 yottaseconds**

* * *

**April 10, 2011, 9:20 PM, a rooftop on the Docks**

"That's the new Ward..." Tattletale let her tongue run as she kept gazing at the ongoing battle. "She's a teleporter very similar to Oni Lee, but she can hold having two bodies for as long as she needs..." Tattletale then noticed and resisted from blabbing that they were twins. "...and can reverse her ports... and she can see through bugs in a big radius... and she can teleport as fast as she can find a new landing spot..."

Tattletale was extremely glad she had insisted they carried some binoculars tonight, because, without them, she wouldn't have had the strategic grounding to ask Bitch to stop three blocks away from the fight, thus falling just a hair outside the two-and-a-half blocks radius of this new cape's range.

But still, she was giving a running commentary for her teammates sake...

"...real radius of two blocks, but effective radius of two and a half due to her rapid teleportation... she's entirely safe from Lung, and is taunting him... no, she's keeping him stationary... she's waiting for Protectorate backup... she's surprised; no: she's elated that she's handling Lung in her own... this is her very first parahuman battle, and she's handling Lung!... her apprehension is going down, and she's beginning to have fun!... _fuck this roof, she can teleport a full block, and she's got Vista with her!_"

And she put down her binoculars and grabbed on the nearby bone spurs, but Bentley didn't start moving under her. She looked around and saw her teammates far too engaged on trying to follow the hero's movements... or in Regent's case, trying not to choke as Bitch saw the fight through his binoculars, still attached to his neck.

Thus Tattletale had to raise her voice:

"Bitch!" she spoke as loudly as she dared, immediately hating how shrill her voice had come out. "We aren't safe here! Fall back another block!" And she pointed to another rooftop, a block further away.

And Bitch did react now, releasing the eyepiece, giving her a curt nod and half-growling some commands, making Bentley, Angelica and Brutus raise five ears, then turn around and begin jumping some roofs.

A minute later, they were in their new position, with Regent trying to follow the new Ward's movements through his eyepiece and both Bitch and Grue looking at her significantly, while Tattletale just kept looking back at them and feeling growing dismay. And then, they all began hearing that distinct whine of a certain Tinker-made turbine motorbike, and Grue and her dismounted from their dogs and carefully peeked down the edge of their roof, well in time to watch Armsmaster lead the local Protectorate in force toward the ongoing battle.

Once the motorcade had gone by, she pulled at Grue's shoulder to make him stand up again, and then whispered to the team:

"I say that we_ fall back to base, because I think the teleporter saw us for a moment there, and I don't want her to try and catch up!"_

"_I agree: fuck this shit,"_ Regent said eloquently, not even having dismounted from behind Bitch. Grue just nodded at Bitch and went to mount Brutus, as Tattletale did the same with Bentley.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, after a very roundabout route meant to throw off a possible search, and climbing to their flat by flashlight, Tattletale finally stopped holding her breath...

And then the main lights came on!

Tattletale didn't need to look left to know that Regent had been the _genius_ who had turned on the lights. And she didn't need to react to it, anyway: Grue had immediately begun expelling his smoke over both light fixtures and windows, and Bitch had busted a knuckle on Regent's skull on her rushed way to turn the lights off again.

The four of them, and even the dogs, held their collective breath.

And they then drifted to their rooms, in perfect silence.

Tattletale undressed, but she did so mechanically, without truly engaging her brain in the process. She then forwent her shower and slipped into bed, first feeling slightly surprised at the fact of being stark naked, but then not feeling like correcting the situation. In the morning, she would be slightly dismayed to notice her under-mask blackout makeup smeared on her pillow, but she couldn't think about it at the moment.

What she could think about was this new Ward. She just knew the new hero was a total game-changer, as she was a perfect counter to Bitch's mobility. Now, if the Undersiders couldn't rely on their perfect record of running away, what would the team do!

* * *

**April 11, 2011, 11:20 AM**

"Tell the boss to fuck off, Lisa," Alec put succinctly, to then stuff his mouth with Cheetos.

_'Terrified of possible Heartbreaker moles in PRT. Will bolt on us if pressured to do a high risk mission.' _

"I have to agree with Alec, Lisa," Brian put more diplomatically. "You told us yesterday that the bug girl can teleport as fast as she can see her next destination, and she was doing at least fifty yards a second on rooftops at night. I did the math and that's about a hundred miles per hour." He paused to sip his coffee. "In broad daylight, I'm betting she can at least double that.

_'Thinks of this job as graduating into true villainy. Thinks that only way to evade will be to injure the bug girl, and doesn't want violent crimes in his file.'_

"Furthermore," he continued, "Central Bank is less than a mile from Arcadia, and being a long distance master, that bug teleporter girl won't even need to suit up: a mask and a hoodie and she's be stalking the bank before the rest of the Wards have even left Arcadia."

"She runs on roofs," Rachel simply grunted.

_'Thinking about us evading Velocity by running diagonally to the city grid and changing directions when he loses visual on us. Understands that it won't work on the bug girl. Worried for her dogs if she isn't there to feed them.' _

Brian nodded at that. "On top of that, with only the four of us, we have enough manpower to do a quick till emptying and then bolt away, but nowhere near it to go for the vault and take those three safe deposit boxes. Even if we completely ignore the tills, we'll still need a brute or a powersuit tinker to follow you into the vault and perform the smash and grab."

_'These are his conditions.'_

Hiding her dread, Lisa stood up from the table.

"I'll go and tell the boss our reasons, then. And I'm off to the mall."

* * *

**At 3:09 pm,** sipping a chai-something that tasted like ashes in a park that coincidentally happened to be in running distance from a police precinct, Lisa received a voice message from her boss:

"Your two objections are noted. I am obtaining Circus or Trainwreck to deal with the first one. For the second one, lead the chase to the location of Lung's capture and I will have a distraction ready. The mission must go in time and place. In the event of capture, you will be rescued."

She replayed it a couple times to make sure her power could read every possible subtext:

_'He sent voicemail because he wanted me to hear his subtexts.'_

_'Pleased that we objected. Didn't mind to lose our team to this mission, but better to not lose it.'_

_'Our mission is nothing but a distraction to something else. He wants those boxes, but can live without them.'_

_'If he secures Circus, she will carry the football and skip on us, leaving us to deal with the chase. If possible, he does want those boxes.'_

_'If she's really chasing us, he will have snipers take out the bug girl. Doesn't care that the lethal takedown will bump our Threat Rating to a solid A. Looks forward to pushing us all further into his pocket.' _

_'If we are captured, he's perfectly wiling to jettison the team. He will rescue me for his dungeon and leave the rest to rot. Except that Regent will have an accident, because not even he wants to deal with Heartbreaker.'_

Finally not seeing any more subtexts, she typed it on a text to Brian and sent it, knowing that the mission was now set in stone.

Calming down a little, she tossed her tea, bought a sausage from the third vendor she passed_ ('One who takes pride in his minuscule-but-honest business and makes his own Halal-safe, mostly-sanitary sausages'),_ and sat down on the grass to people- watch.

Five minutes later, she sat up, though: two identical twin girls having two hushed conversations with two boys. What raised a flag for her was that, despite being thirty yards apart, the rear one having no visual with the front one in the crowded sidewalk, and paying each other absolutely no mind, their two lower bodies were moving in absolute, perfect sync.

Incorporating rapidly, but staying on her side of the street, Lisa began following them discreetly.

_'Listening in the other conversation and exchanging dialogue. Bluetooths in their ears were just for show. Can hear through each other's ears. Power of reciprocal hyper-awareness. These two are Ladybug, the Bug Girl.'_

Looking at the two boys... _'Aegis with front girl. Clockblocker with second girl. Aegis is strictly business, talking rules and regulations. Clockblocker is trying to be funny. He is attracted to her/them, but is trying to be friendly rather than flirty. She/them friendly to Clockblocker. She/them are developing an Electra Complex for Aegis. Aegis oblivious, feels parental to his newest subordinates.'_

And while this was some delicious gossip, Lisa forced herself to slow down and let them fade into the crowd, then turn back toward her car. She now had to find a way to shake their pursuit before they stepped into Coil's landmine.

Five minutes later, though, she stopped. There was a woman on a very fetching black pantsuit and a matching fedora leaning on her car, eating a sausage from the same stand as hers. There were five more sausages, all wrapped to go, on the car's roof. She looked quite relaxed as she glanced at Lisa.

To the unempowered eye, she would seem like somebody's cool aunt, but Lisa's power was telling so much more:

_'Knows who you are.'_

_'Knows what Coil has done to you.'_

_'Feels like a villain and wants redemption.'_

_'Wants to fuck up Coil's plans. Wants to help you.'_

_'Wants you to play along.'_

The lady pushed off her car and came to gently pinch one of her cheeks with the hand not holding greasy goodness.

"And how's my favourite niece, Lizzy?"

Lisa chose to like her. Only two people (other than Alec) had ever called her Lizzy.

"Don't call me Lizzy, aunty: I'm not five," she replied playfully, although she offered her cheek again to be pinched. Literally only one person had ever pinched her like that: the nanny who she had named herself after.

Once having received another pinch, she moved to unlock her car.

_'She'd prefer if you drive,'_ her power fed her, so she picked up two of the sausages before climbing into the driver's side, set them on the dashboard, and started the car.

"Where to, aunty?"

"Contessa, dear," the lady said, giving her another smile. "East, but don't start driving just yet," the lady said. She then opened the glovebox and spoke at it.

"Glovebox to the Number Man."

The inside of the glovebox then changed to what seemed to be a desktop strewn with papers. The lady reached through with one wrapped sausage.

"Now eat it while it's hot!" she shouted through the opening.

"Yes, dear," came a distant answer.

"Glovebox to you, guys."

The desktop changed to an onyx table, where she deposited the other two sausages.

"Thanks," came in stereo through the opening.

"And glovebox to Tattletale's go-bag."

The glovebox changed to the inside of her closet at the Undersiders' flat, directly in front of Lisa's escape bag, which she kept updated but for months hadn't dared to believe she would use. The lady pulled it through, handed it to Lisa and closed the glovebox.

"Now, dear," the lady started.,"I can simply remove that poison bomb from your neck and send you to Australia, but I want to ask if you would help somebody else before you go."

"Yes, of course," Lisa replied soberly. "I'm not a nice one, but I never wanted to be a villain in the first place."

"Good," Contessa said. "Now, you aren't the only one who has noticed Amy Dallon becoming unstable. Few have noticed that she's a free biokinetic, and all of us worry where that combo leads."

Lisa nodded.

"It would be easy enough to kill her, but we want to redeem her. And that letter of yours sets a chain of events that keeps her sane and happy long term."

* * *

Ten minutes later, Contessa had her changed into a ridiculous hot pink minidress, black biker shorts, rollerskates, kneepads and a helmet, then loaded her head first into a shopping trolley and hurled her down a steep street.

Lisa didn't need to feint terror when she saw a bus speeding at her trolley. Contessa's toss had been perfectly timed, _just as her power was telling her_, with the trolley impacting the bus rather than the other way.

As she lay reeling in pain, Panacea boiled out of the bus, ran at her prone form and... hovered her hands just about her skin.

"Do I have your permission to heal you?" she asked, clearly barely restraining herself.

"_My neck!"_ Lisa whezzed, taking one of Panacea's hands and pressing it against her neck. In an instant, Panacea was holding in confussion a tube the size of a AA battery.

"_Drop it_" Lisa urged, batting it off Panacea's hand. "_Poison bomb!_"

And indeed, almost as soon as it hit the asphalt, the tiny thing ballooned and popped, letting out nearly black, purple ichor, then lettting out some smoke as it burned itself.

_'Complex toxic mixture meant to kill over several hours. Inorganic chemistry meant to spoof Panacea's known powers. Meant to make me want to go back and beg Coil for antidote.' _

_'Activated via a miniscule thermite charge meant to create burning sensation, meant in turn to inform the user that they had begun dying.'_

_'Activated because of active tracking on Panacea. Panacea's phone. Panacea's PRT-issued phone. Normal tracking: Panacea not in danger.'_

Shaking her head, and suffering for her bothers, she looked up at the disturbed Panacea.

_'Doesn't understand what she just saw.'_

_'Carol Dallon's black-and-white mentality doesn't allow her to parse what she saw: normal looking teenager with a bomb inside her neck.'_

"That was my shackle as a slave," Lisa murmured at her. Panacea looked down at her in horror. "Not every villain is a villain because we want to," Lisa added.

She then incorporated with help from some other bus passengers who had disembarked after Panacea, produced her letter and stuffed it in Panacea's blouse pocket.

Taking a moment to reorient herself _('your blood pressure spiked from you incorporating too fast'),_ she looked at the bus driver, then pointed at the chip and told him: "The villain Coil must already be sending mercs to locate his poison bomb. Get moving and then everybody evacuate into the hospital!"

The driver paled, but then he nodded.

"Thanks" he said, turning at his passengers and shouting them inside.

Lisa then turned and skated away, going downhill and perpendicular from the main street where she had just lost her shackle.

* * *

Five minutes later, Contessa had intercepted her, then driven into the garage of _'house foreclosed last week, with a starving dog in the basement'_.

* * *

Contessa's last two sausages where, of course, for the dog.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Lisa was hugging her new pet while Contessa stroked her, letting her cry for her newfound freedom.

But still, once Lisa had regained control, her power begun reading Contessa anew: _'wants to help you, but she's got other people to help. Needs to get moving.'_

Cleaning her tears, Lisa nodded at her.

"Now, Lisa, I can give you two options: you either restart as a hero in New Zealand, or you come with me and help me save all of humanity."

_'She means it: her own mission is to save everything. I can either be a Thinker safe in a castle, or go for the grand adventure.'_

"I'll take the red pill, aunty Morpheus," she said, quoting an Earth Aleph film. "Show me how deep the rabbit hole goes."

"Deeper than you imagine," Contessa replied, pulling her and kissing her forehead. "Now, do you need anything out of your hideout?"

"My laptop and some clothes, I guess, but can I say goodbye?"

Contessa's eyes looked into the distance while her lips drew the words 'path to...'. She then shock her head at Lisa.

"I'll give you five minutes to _quietly_ stuff your belongings into your car. Your message will have to be your half-empty room."

Lisa nodded soberly. Contessa opened a 'big door' to her room at the hideout.

And five minutes of quiet frenzy later, where she noticed that Contessa wasn't leaving space for a passenger in her car, Lisa was giving a farewell hug to the lady and receiving some last minute instructions:

"Now, Lisa, just drive, and when you get to Ponyville, just ask around for Princess Twilight Sparkle. You'll get a kick out of her." _'A literal kick if you tease her too much.'_ Then, to the air: "Garage door to the White Tail Woods."

* * *

**4:01pm, Dockworkers Union Administrative Offices, Office of the Head of Hiring**

KNOCK-KNOCK

Danny Hebert looked up from his paperwork to see the floor's gopher, Clarice, eyeing him from the open door.

"Hi, Clarice, what can I do for you?" he asked kindly.

"You told me to kick you out at four o-clock, boss," she answered, grinning as she gestured at her watch. "That you need to buy party stuff to toss a surprise party at your daughters."

"Thanks, Clarice," he replied, capping his pen and pushing the half-done paperwork back into his inbox.

He was out of the office within two minutes.

* * *

**5:15PM**

'That's weird,' he thought, seeing Zoe's BMW already parked on his driveway. After all, if marrying (and widowing) a university teacher had ever taught him anything, it was that Mondays were always long days up at BBU.

He parked, picked up as much as he could of the groceries (making sure to include the frozen and cold stuff) and went through the kitchen's entrance.

"Hello," he shouted as he slipped in.

"After-noon, Danny," came a halting reply from the living room.

He frowned: he voice had sounded slightly broken. Which sadly was a common state for her nowadays, even if she always tried to look neutral to positive in front of his girls.

"With you in a minute, Zoe: I've got groceries."

"K, Danny."

So he hurried to load the fridge, then went back to his truck for the rest (especially the cake), loaded the cake too into the fridge and left the rest of the groceries on the counter while he went to check on Zoe.

He easily slipped onto the couch and into a gentle embrace with his weepy sister in law, but immediately noticed some papers on the coffee table.

"_Alan served me divorce papers,"_ she whispered, noticing his attention. _"Twenty-four years of me not even looking at another man, and he tosses me aside over a twenty day separation."_

Danny just pulled at her harder. He too was very upset at his old friend, but couldn't help to also feel a generous amount of pity for him: first he had assured Zoe for almost two years that "he was dealing with Emma's problems." Then they blew up on their faces and he tried his hardest and burned every bridge to make stick an insanity plea, but then that too blew up when Emma smugly stood up in court and gloated that justice was for the poor. This naturally sunk Emma into juvenile hall like a cannonball, and saw Alan suspended from his law firm and (last Danny had heard through the grapevine) in risk of disbarment.

Danny momentarily entertained the idea that Alan was divorcing her to save her from getting splashed with his own tar and feathers, but then glanced at the photocopy of his girls' bully diary (which sat under the phone on the corner table), remembered Alan's denials last month, and chose to harden his heart.

Well, harden his heart at Alan. For Zoe, he took advantage of their sizable size difference to pull her on his lap, curl her up against his chest, stand up and lay on his recliner with her curled up on top of him like she was a child.

"My wife's sister is most welcome in my home," he informed into her hair, holding her. "Even permanently."

She let out a sad chuckle."I'm not actually related, you know," she retorted.

"Annette would have said, and I quote, 'Unde sanguis crassior aquae'," he stated.

"The blood you bleed for your friends is thicker than the thin water of the afterbirth", she translated the complete quote.

She let a few comfortable minutes pass.

She then pushed up, bringing her face near his.

"Want to know something weird, Danny?" she asked rhetorically. "Remember the period between me having that bad break up and you introducing me to Alan?"

Danny didn't, not really, but he nodded.

"Well, Annette saw me devastated, told me that you were such a great man that even Lustrum would approve of you, and invited me to date you with her." She then manoeuvred to kneel up, towering over him. "I regret telling her no."

She then leaned down and kissed him.

He was paralyzed for a moment before catching himself. But then he didn't shove her off as would have been his first instinct: he rather pushed her off as gently as possible, then pulled her forehead against his lips and gave her a soft, parental kiss.

"I will not take advantage of your hour of need, Zoe," he said, as he manoeuvred her to be curled on top of him again.

"You are the best man ever, Danny Hebert," she said, opening his first two buttons and grabbing a handful of his chest hair. They then settled into a comfortable silence.

A few more minutes later, she broke the silence:

"He's offering me a deal that's very favourable to me," she informed. "Being a divorce attorney himself, I guess he just wants it over with. I'll have it combed by some friends at the BBU Law School, but I think I'll sign it as is."

"So, back to the never-ending pun name?" he asked.

She chuckled at that. For a change, it was a nice chuckle.

"I think I'll stay 'Professor Barnes' for now," she said, punching his chest playfully. "I made Alan marry me a solid semester before graduating, just so I would never suffer the displeasure of being called 'Professor Zoe Long'."

"Don't know what your problem would be, Zoe," he said, shaking her equally playfully. "As a physics professor, your assignments are deep rather than long. Or should I say Depp?"

She hit him again.

"If I had ever suffered my mom's maiden name, I would have never gone into physics."

"No, you would have gone into geology."

She hit him again, but she too shared in his laughter: she had, after all, gotten a Master's degree on geophysics just before Emma was born.

She lay on his chest for a couple moments, to then straighten up and kiss his cheek.

"I need to go get cleaned up, Danny," she said, slipping toward the floor. "I can't have them find their aunty a mess right before we toss them a celebratory supper."

"Nonetheless," he added, incorporating after her. "I'm not letting you cry yourself to sleep tonight. See you back on the couch."

"Oh, Danny," she said, coming back to hug him.

Nonetheless, he saw it coming and reacted appropriately: he bent his legs two feet down, then reciprocated her hug by embracing her upper back and below her buttocks and stood up again, lifting her effortlessly.

She let out a little eep and hugged him harder, her legs kicking ineffectively.

"Danny, what are you doing!" she exclaimed.

"I picked you up," he said, conversationally.

"You can't pick me up like this!" she added, sounding as scandalized as he wanted her to. "I'm not twelve!"

"You aren't twelve, Zoe," he said. "You are like four foot _eleven_, about..." he bounced her on his arms a moment. "About ninety pounds, and you'll remember that I'm six foot seven, two hundred and ten pounds, and while I'm white collar, I happen to be the descendant of a long line of longshoremen."

"That's not the point!" she exclaimed again, punching his back. "I'm forty-five: this is undignified!"

"Precisely, Zoe," he said, stroking her hair with his upper hand before crossing it across her buttocks: he wasn't _that_ fit. "You are smarter than this, but you are currently hurting. Friends don't let friends catch a rebounce romance."

She took a moment, but then nuzzled him. "K, Danny, I'll be good." she said, calmly.

He let her down.

She gave his cheek a gentle stroke before heading for the stairs.

Then he caught a look at the mirror, noticed his shirt was covered in makeup, and he too scurried upstairs to freshen up.

* * *

Supper was an awesome family night.

The mac & cheese was... mac & cheese.

The skirt steaks, medium-well, were superb.

The roasted potatoes with bacon were neither under-cooked nor dry, so they were likely his best ever.

Chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream were still the best combination.

And Zoe brought up her divorce gently. His girls were upset and cried with her a little, but it was much more controlled than it could have been.

* * *

**That evening, **once she got home, Panacea took that girl's letter out of her pocket and read it:

_Amy:_

_I am so sorry to however I must have manipulated you, but due to the tracking device that you must have extracted from my neck, I couldn't just walk into either Brockton Memorial, Arcadia, either the Dallon or Pelham residences, a police station or PRT HQ and ask for help. The bastard that enslaved me had informed me that if the tracker ever found me anywhere near these places, or beyond city limits, it would inject poison. And due to my own power (super intuition, in that I can read between lines like crazy), I knew I would die screaming._

_Now, I wish to ask a huge, huge favour: please, after you are done with this note, pass it on to your sister's boyfriend, with express instructions to give it in person to either Gloryhound (aka Armsmaster) or Director Piggot. Please also tell Gallant that painting his armour the same colour as his custom-coloured car was a freaking neon sign. My message is as follows: My slaver was the villain known as Coil. All of the Undersiders were somehow browbeaten into joining up: I was given a choice between a bag of money and an implanted tracking chip, or a bullet; Grue is fighting a custody battle to get his little sister away from his junkie mother, and losing due to lack of credentials; Regent is hiding from his father, Heartbreaker; Rachel Lindt was promised that he would make her charges disappear so she could settle down and have her dog shelters in the open. Coil is a high level Thinker with a power that trumps mine, but I think that he is some sort of precog that can see both results of a binary decision, then choose. The only two other facts I've gathered: (A) We are not the only villain group he controls in this city. Newcomers, but not inexperienced. Also that he didn't like that we Undersiders refuse to kill, so he won't be attracting Faultline's crew. (B) He is either a high ranking official in the PRT ENE, or has some equivalent cut into your pie. And I've seen three underground complexes solely owned by him, so not only is he immensely rich, but also must have some links to the construction industry._

_And now, Amy, a whopper for you: you've always wondered the identity of your real father. Go to that park near your home, through the bushes under the only maple tree. Look for a stone that doesn't belong. I hid a huge clue to his identity under it, plus a more personal note. Just please make up your mind soon, because it will rain soon._

After reading it for the third time, she carefully tore off the last paragraph, then crossed the hallway from her room and handed the note to her sister. And then had to undergo a half-hour interrogation first from her sister, who was concerned that Amy had faced a villain on her own, then her mother, who just wanted a description to give to the PRT.

Compounded with her not having done her homework yet, Amy went to sleep way too late that night.

* * *

**That night**, Danny Hebert went to sleep alone on the recliner at his living room.

* * *

**The next morning,** Danny woke up to a sister-in-law drooling on his chest and one of his twins taking in the sight while the other made omelettes for breakfast.

And for the first time in a long, long time, he couldn't tell them apart until he put his glasses on. And even then, he had a hard time seeing the tiny scar on the tip of Zoe's nose, or a similarly minute one on Rose's chin.

* * *

**That afternoon,** he visited his optometrist. Even going into an extended eye exam, the optometrist couldn't find anything wrong: his eyes weren't getting any worse.

* * *

**That night,** he pulled out the photo album, pulled his girls aside and they all got to see that, indeed, their scars were fading.

More dramatically, his girls told him to step outside their room for a moment. They then asked him inside again, and showed him that the crater on Zoe's upper left thigh seemed to be getting less ugly, while Rose seemed to be developing a discoloration in the same spot.

The conclusion was undeniable: their little blemishes weren't healing, but rather blending across their two bodies. They were becoming literally identical.

Once they calmed down, they promised him they would begin wearing their red and blue costume jewellery. He had never needed it to tell them apart, so they had fallen out of using it shortly after entering Winslow.

* * *

**A couple nights later,** he came to regret he had opened his mouth at all.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

I just don't know anymore if Cauldron's awareness over the shards' compulsion for conflict was fanon or canon. If canon, then it was simply stupid out of them to believe that "Path of Victory" didn't include the compulsion for conflict, and had tried to mitigate the limitation. Furthermore, what's up with their only plan being "More Parahumans!"? And what's up with Contessa being a dancing monkey, being naught but a puppet to her power? Therefore, here you have a Contessa that decided to think.

Never mind the soft cross with MLP.


	7. 3,1,1: r(theta) equals1-sin(theta)

**.**

* * *

**The Taylor Twins 3.1, Part 1**

* * *

**r(theta)=1-sin(theta)**

* * *

**April 14, 2011, Thursday, 1937hrs **

RING-RING…

RING-RING…

_'Not now, damn it!' _thought Jessica Yamada, as she bolted off the couch where she had been cuddling with her hubby, then ran to get her PRT-issued phone from their bedroom. The caller ID sobered her, though: 'HEBERT FATHER'.

"Doctor Yamada speaking."

"Sorry for calling, doctor. And specially sorry to interrupt your evening. This is Danny Hebert. My girls are having something of a situation here."

"Are they okay?" she asked the 'obviously not' question.

"I wouldn't say so, doc: its been years since the last time they even gave each other a cold shoulder, yet today I feel they were a minute away from coming to blows!"

"Did you hear what they were arguing about?" Jessica had a very good idea what the argument would be all about, but she had some hope about that particular can of worms to not have been opened. Not yet.

"Well, doctor, do you know Natto?"

"A little too well," Jessica immediately replied, sighing in relief: the bomb hadn't blown up, yet. "My dad and my son can't get enough of it, but I find it disgusting." And she imagined the twins were similar.

"Well, similar here," Danny said. "Zoe loves it, while Rose hates it. So I came home to a nearly full can of fermented soy beans in the kitchen, a puddle of vomit on their bathroom, and the two of them screaming about not wanting to feel violated by the other's boyfriend."

_'So the bomb did go off,'_ Jessica though, cursing everything: she had certainly hoped the girls came out of their denial that having lost all privacy with each other would never be an issue; nonetheless, she had been trying to guide them so, when they finally had their meltdown, they would rage at destiny rather than at each other. And it was now her _urgent_ task to guide them out of the rage stage, then to see if she could defeat their bargaining and set them firmly into depression. They would be a sorry sight tomorrow morning, but it would be better than to let them stew in anger.

"Doctor?"

"Mr. Hebert," she replied. "I really don't think this can wait. Let me see..." She then thought: she had a guest room at home, but a familiar setting would be beneficial, especially as she knew the girls didn't even have separate beds, and had rode their denial by sleeping in that conjoined form they had once showed her. She would use that as a handhold! "I'll be at your place in… forty minutes to an hour."

"And I'm sorry for interrupting your evening, but I'm just lost and Aunt Zoe's in Concord, filing her divorce."

"It is all for the best, Mr. Hebert. Just tell your girls that I want to see them in their dicephalous form, in their sleeping clothes."

"O…kay, doc: I will tell them. They won't like it, though."

"I don't expect them too. But we are out of time to rip the bandage off."

Upon hanging up, she shared a mournful look with her hubby.

He gave her an equally mournful kiss, then helped her be ready in under ten minutes.

* * *

**1947hrs**

RING-RING

At his phone's chime, Steve Renick perked up, then marched out of his living room while his wife sighed and paused the movie. After all, she had seen him put it in silence; thus knew that any messages or calls that still got through would be for Deputy Renick, not for her husband.

In the hallway, he flipped the phone open and went for his texts.

He had one from Doctor Yamada, the on-call parahuman psychiatrist, and it was labelled "Priority B1". Nothing was ever good with that combo.

Indeed, it wasn't:

_Priority B1_

_Ladybug has fallen out of denial regarding their personal disadvantages of being a Case 70. I will now conduct an emergency session with them to guide them through and out of the rage phase. _

_In my authority as resident counsellor for the Wards' Program ENE, I declare Ladybug unfit for either school or duty for the next twenty-four hours, subject to extension._

_Wish me luck, Steve._

"_Better you than me, Jess"_ he muttered as he forwarded it to his secretary (who would deal with it in the morning), then flipped his phone closed. This was precisely why the PRT keeps an on-call psychiatrist.

* * *

Forty-three minutes after receiving the call, Jessica was telling a nearly-panicked male to go and get lost for at least an hour (and come back with take out, preferably something that had to be eaten with two hands such as burgers), to then browbeat the girls first into their bedroom, then into their conjoined form, and finally had them talking. She had to improvise a session loosely based on couples' therapy relating to accepting harmless sexual quirks… except that Jessica was having to adapt it, on the fly, for two sisters, teenagers, non-incestuous, straight, who had apparently never masturbated in their lives, who were coming to realize the downsides of having become conjoined, and were on the verge of loosing their identities as individuals.

If she was honest with herself, by the end of the first hour she had closed her eyes and had come to pretend into her mind that she wasn't giving a sexology session to two underage girls, but to a single woman with severe psychological anorgasmia. Then rotate which name she was saying. And not loose sight that she was basically helping two girls to not fear to be touched by the other.

And she had been able to work the food into the session, too, rather than make it into an interruption.

"_Now, Zoe, please use your right hand, and give yourself a slow, gentle caress on your left breast. And Rose, please tell us how that makes you feel."_

"_Now, Rose, please place a kiss on your two hands, and then place those kisses on your two hips."_

"_Now, Zoe, please use your hand and caress your sister's cheek."_

"_Girls: I don't agree that there are any labels on either of those burgers, so I say that both of them are for both of you. Therefore, I want you to wait on each other: you will first agree on which of you gets the first bite, then she will bite, masticate and swallow before she offers her sister to bite on top of her own bite. And she will then calmly masticate and swallow before she offers the burger back. And girls: rather than feel jealous that your sister is eating and you aren't, I want you to rejoice that your sister's mouth is full of juicy, flavourful food."_

And that burger certainly was slow... but the girls prevailed beautifully through such a difficult exercise. And Gosh if this exercise wouldn't be necessary if the girls decided they just couldn't share a boyfriend! Or even if they did, and found a boy who says "Good Morning" by means of sudden snogging. Or they found themselves a shy little creature of a boy who wouldn't declare to the world that he was doing something so bold as dating twins. Or they begun dating a broke little gentleman who wouldn't take their money, yet couldn't afford triple movie tickets, triple dinners, et al. Or, later in life, found a liking for one night stands, yet decided that going out as twins marginalized normal men while it attracted far too many pervs. In any case, Jessica suspected the Thinker aspect of their super-twins' power actually made the exercise easy: they were, after all, literally tasting the food inside the others' mouth. And they went through it so beautifully that they had, on their own, begun to kiss the cheek of the one who was chewing. And Jessica thus found the exercise so useful that she instructed them to repeat it whenever they could eat in their dicephalous form and were in no hurry.

And, as to their drinks, Mr. Hebert had only provided them a single, extra large cookie dough/blueberry milkshake, along with a short explanation for her: each of them liked one of the flavours while despised the other, so whenever they had a serious row as kids, their late mother would sit them down and offer this as supper. And the girls then went to their socks' drawer and produced this non-disposable, Y-shaped straw, which they explained, with a chuckle, was the punishment part of the shake: neither could drink unless both were drinking. And they didn't drink it altogether, either: they kept sipping it throughout the next hour, and then kept glancing at the empty glass when the exercises got though. As amulets went, Jessica had seen odder, and didn't discourage it... for tonight. She would need to transfer the amulet from the comfort food to the straw, through: twelve hundred calories weren't a healthy fixation at all!

The next item, on the other hand, was something that Jessica didn't realize at the moment how risky it was: for the first pocket of fries, she asked them to pick up the fries by the middle, then eat them from both sides at once! If the girls had chaffed at this exercise, they could have blown up at her, they could have regressed to the rage stage and, if worse came to worst, their entire relationship as doctor and patients could fall apart! Thankfully, the girls took the exercise at face value, they ate steadily, and they stopped blushing before they ate all the fries. She hoped they would later reflect and find the exercise even more positive: they simply needed to realize that, regardless of them being straight and non-incestuous, their sexual identities would necessarily have to include each other!

The fries' exercise also warmed them up nicely for the third part of the session, where she would need to make sure their momentary sense of accomplishment didn't mean a regression into some new denial. So Jessica wouldn't end this session until she saw them break down in tears, for she was now confident they would fall in each others' arms. So she had them scarf down their second combo meal, then got them to remove their nightshirt (and noted their conjoined form didn't include a middle breast or even two bellybuttons), made them move from their desk chair to their bed, and she kicked the session into high gear.

"_Now, Rose, please give a slow, long caress to your left leg, then another one to your right leg. And Zoe, tell us how it feels." _

"_Zoe and Rose, I want you to turn to look at each other and keep eye contact. Meanwhile, Zoe, please place your sister's hand on top of your panties and gently cup your womanhood, and Rose, please use your sister's hand to gently caress her cheek."_

"_Now, Rose, I want you to ask your sister if you could play with her bellybutton for a moment."_

"_Now, Zoe, I want you to ask your sister if you could play with her bellybutton."_

"_Now, Rose, I want you to ask your sister if you could use both her hand and your hand to play with your breasts for a moment." _

_..._

"_Zoe, I want you to kiss your hands. Or are these your hands, Rose?"_

_..._

"_Is this body yours, Zoe, or yours, Rose? Or is it, perhaps, of the two of you, girls?"_

The only blessing Yamada had was that the Heberts were atheists: not only she didn't have to squeeze through mental shackles meant to keep women pliant and submissive to men, but their own dead mother had taught them that knowing how to extract pleasure from their bodies wasn't only right, but an obligation of every proud woman. Which also meant that their current problem was limited to loss of personal space, rather than fire and brimstone.

And well, she had also wiggled out that both girls were crushing after the same boy, and some animosity had been festering among them about the fact. Jessica would have wanted to not completely shatter their illusions, but she had to defeat their bargains. Therefore, she had to firmly instill on them that, with or without context, most boys fantasize about dating twins.

But finally, in the eve of the witching hour, the twins were in their bed, holding each other, well on their way toward crying themselves asleep. As she neared the door, Jessica saw this thin, foot-long metal stick slowly retract from the old-style keyhole. And upon opening the door, she was less than surprised to find Danny Hebert sitting on a toolbox, a car mechanic's stethoscope around his neck, looking as tired as she felt. She carefully closed the door and made her way to the kitchen, with Danny following a step behind. She took a seat, but he rather went to the fridge and pulled some "Corona" beers.

He moved to open her bottle, but she gestured him off. "I'm not actually fond of beer," she said, "although I'm partial to sweet liquors, if you may have any."

He let out a chuckle at that. "That I do," he said, while he went to look under the breakfast bar and came up with a brandy snifter and this wooden-looking bottle. He poured her a generous helping of a clear liquor, then placed the bottle in front of her. He then made a move to open one of the beers, but seemed to think better about it and rather put them back in the fridge, pulled out a milk carton and some glasses, and went again to the breakfast bar for another snifter. He poured himself some, then sat down.

Jessica inspected her own glass. Against the light, it turned up to not be completely clear, but to have a very subtle grass-green tint. Swirling it... she first found that it was actually quite viscous, somewhere in the middle between water and honey. Swirling it some more and placing it under her nose, she found it to smell like aniseed, but with strong hints of... she didn't know what. And the taste: it did have a strong aniseed flavour, but not in the sense of being an aniseed liquor, but more like the foundation to a very complex flavour. A flavour that she found intriguing.

Putting it down, she found Danny gesturing for her to pick up the bottle. It read 'Xtabentum Daristi.'

"The liquor is called _Sh_tabentu_M_," he said, carefully mouthing the consonants, and pronouncing the vowels like it was Japanese. "Annette and I had our honeymoon in Cancun, and we both got hooked with Mexican drinks: I got a real taste to tequila, mezcal and Mexican beers, and she got her own for Mexican digestives: bottled egg nog, coffee liquor, and this little jewel that we later learned wasn't even quite Mexican, but rather a regional specialty produced around Cancun." He took another sip. "It took me years to find an American seller carrying it, and in fact I bought Annette three cases for our ten year anniversary, and I still have twenty-seven bottles in the attic." He downed the rest of his drink and poured two glasses of milk, pushing one at Jessica. "My wife loved its flavour, but I can hardly stand it: she said it was _Shhh_tabentum flowers fermented in honey and aniseed, but I don't like sweets drinks, and find the aftertaste horrid... I've been drinking it a bottle a year: I drink her two shots after the girls' birthday, another two shots on our anniversary, and I chug the rest the day she died..."

He seemed to have finally discharged his nervous energy, so Jessica started: "Mr. Hebert..."

"Danny," he interrupted. "I'm no 'mister' to anybody I'm sharing drinks with."

"I can certainly salute to that, Danny. I'm Jessica," she said, while she refilled her glass and he sipped his milk.

She took a sip of the complex liquor before opening her mouth again. "Well, Danny: I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Jess," he replied, gesturing with his milk. "I too had gotten thinking about what their sensation-sharing would mean for their future relationships: unless my girls find an off-switch to their super twins' power, an off-switch that likely doesn't exist, they will either have to learn to share a boy, or will have to learn to tolerate feeling violated whenever the other one is with her own boy. Not to mention finding two very understanding boys who won't mind another boy feeling up his girlfriend."

"See, Danny: I hadn't thought about the male perspective." She took another sip.

"Or mine, Jess: once it circulates that my twin girls wouldn't mind sharing a single boyfriend, I'll be fending off pervs with a stick. I too was a boy, Jess!"

"That particular fetiche is common enough with the girls, too, Danny", she replied, serving herself a little more. "Besides, I wouldn't really worry about that:" she dismissed. "You girls don't have daddy issues, so they will hardly be looking for a boy who would annoy you, and I'm sorry to say it, but they are far enough from the current ideal of beauty that alpha males will hardly come and sweep them from their feet. Instead, you and I are most likely to observe the Electra Complex: girls are attracted to boys who remind them of their own fathers. You are intellectually bent and chivalrous, so I would expect them to seek shy, smart, introverted boys.

"Furthermore, I've gathered that they are crushing after one of their teammates." She took a sip. "They wouldn't have been fighting over Gallant, who is publicly known to be taken; or Clockblocker, who is very extroverted and likes to prod people. That narrows the options down to Aegis, Browbeat or Kid Win, either of which I know to be shy and courteous. And considering that it is a crush at the time rather than something more profound, I imagine they will focus on Aegis, being him a leader like you are among the moral leaders of the Dockworkers. And here in private," she added, leaning forward on the table, "_Aegis can certainly empathize with the circumstances of their own trigger event,_" she finished in a private whisper.

Danny's eyes bulged. "So he too..."

"Yes. A worsening of chronic abuse is a fairly common trigger event. And he finds his own powers depressing: in his own words, his bullies could now kick him harder without him even bruising, and he couldn't fly away with witnesses."

"Ouch to the kid," Danny said, wincing in sympathy while he refilled both snifters. He then raised his into a toast: "To my girls getting together with Aegis."

Jessica clinked her snifter with his, they both chugged them, and Danny made to stand up.

"Before I forget, Danny: I want to take your girls with me tomorrow to the Asylum. First so they know they aren't that badly off, then to meet Sveta, this horribly mutated girl who could definitely use some more pen pals."

Danny gave her a heartfelt nod, then stood up from the table.

"Be welcome to the master bedroom, doc," he said, retreating. "I changed the sheets today. As for me, I've slept three nights this week alone on my recliner, so it will be less than shocking."

"But, Danny; I can still drive!" She protested, to then stand up... or fail to.

"Shhhtabentum kicks like a mule!" He said with a chuckle, to then lay himself down on the couch.

Jessica then picked up the bottle and read the smaller letters under the name:

**Contenido alcohólico: 50% '**_Fifty percent alcohol. Also known as 100 proof.' _

"Damn it!" And she then reprized the last few minutes of conversation, noticed that she had violated patient confidentiality on both Sveta and Aegis, then groaned as she banged her head on the table a couple times. And she then carefully stood up and went to find the offered bed on shaky legs.

* * *

**Meanwhile,** Amy Dallon was oh-so-carefully sneaking out from home...

...Twelve minutes later, she was arriving at a park that was five minutes away from her home. Unfortunately, Amy didn't have any experience sneaking about, so she had been basically jumping from bush to bush all the way.

'_I might have been less conspicuous if I had worn my freaking Panacea robe and just walked on the stupid sidewalk', _she thought ruefully, thinking about the myriad of twigs that had noisily snapped under her while she failed to sneak here. And now this jeans and this sweatshirt were completely smudged with dirt, and she had a scratch on her cheek and leaves on her hair...

But she was here, in this thick pack of flowering bushes in the north side of the park. But _damn it,_ inside the bushes the streetlights didn't give any illumination, and...

...Just in front of her nose, she spied an electric blue plastic tube with a button, duct-tapped to a branch. A pocket flashlight!

Although, on trying to pull it loose, she noticed that it was angled down, roughly at her knees. Experimentally, Amy left it there and turned it on... and it illuminated a lurid orange piece of cinderblock sticking proudly on the unremarkable brown dirt.

Amy promptly pulled it up, then begun scratching the dirt underneath it.

'_Why didn't I think about bringing a stupid trowel? Or my own flashlight? And why did I have to sneak about in my own stupid neighbourhood?' _

But this villain seemed to have though even on that: barely half an inch under the brick, she found a zip-lock bag, containing a letter, what looked like a bank statement, a folding shovel and a money clip holding a small stack of twenties.

She then begun reading the letter:

_Amy, I'm almost certain that you tried to sneak here, and failed to a ridiculous level._

Amy scowled at that.

.

_Please use the provided shovel to dig some more at a later date, if you choose to run away rather than march into the PRT-ENE and ask for membership in exchange for emancipation. I left for you a change of clothing and ten thousand dollars in varied denomination: just enough for you to have a nice and anonymous beach vacation, then take a Greyhound bus to LA, give yourself an extreme makeover (including one of those Case-53's tattoos) and walk into the local PRT, claiming that you can't remember anything, but that you can turn animal offall into power armour. Additionally, while I can assure you that Alexandria won't be fooled for a second, she'll be willing to look the other way for a chance to poach Panacea._

_And face it, Amy: at this point in time, you are just making excuses not to run away. Mark is a nice dad... whenever he can be bothered to take his pills for three days straight. Seen that happen in the last couple of months? Carol has some extreme trust issues, and will never see you as a daughter unless you changed your genome to match Victoria's, then somehow turn the clock back seventeen years and push yourself out of her cunt the same day that Victoria was born. And Victoria is a self-obsessed Barbie doll that happens to be straight as a ruler and sees you as her kid sister... and even if she was gay and wouldn't mind incest, you know that you would always have that little seed of resentment in you. Firstly, you resent her total lack of appreciation at you having to bend over backwards to clean her bloodtrail. How many people __per month__ does she break and leave bleeding on the street, knowing that it's perfectly alright since Panacea can just put them back together? Shouldn't she change her name to Gory Girl? Secondly, you burn in envy every time Carol descends from the skies and hugs and babies her and makes her do totally ineffective promises of no longer maiming homeless people over such heinous crimes as shoplifting food, while she will then turn and glower at you for having bloodstains on your robe? And don't you resent Gruesome Girl that she's so incredibly self-centred that she had apparently never noticed that "Mommy" never gives you your share of hugs and kisses? And last but definitely not least: you resent her for knowing that your sister's Master power stole your sexuality. And you have to come out of your denial: you know that you aren't actually gay. You know that the only woman that you lust after is her._

_By the way, if you have any doubt that Carol hates you, look at the attached bank statement at the sections "Deposits" and "Trust Funds". I've highlighted some disturbing information there._

_Well, before you tear this letter in half, the clue I promised: look for the only biokinetic villain detained by the Brockton Bay Brigade before you were 5 years old. Look for one that stopped the commerce of any narcotic more dangerous than marijuana and hashish. Look for one that transformed protection rackets into voluntary donations, and who established an emergency number that received more calls than 911 from his territory. Look for one that stopped sexual exploitation and even established an unofficial whore union. Look for one that made himself famous for crucifying one of his own lieutenants for committing rape, and drove violent crime to its lowest point in this city's history. Look for the one who was holding back both the E88 and the Teeth, and made the people feel safe. Look for one who was never actively pursued by police, and whom senior police officers still sigh about. Look for one of those who inaugurated the Endbringer Truce. Look for one that personally demolished that burned-up husk that was Geiger High School and pulled several million from his pocket to build Arcadia. And finally, look for one whose name is taboo at New Wave, due to the fact that his capture made the BBB's popularity plummet so far down that they had to re-brand themselves both with new name and the no-masks thing just to justify themselves to the public. So, in short, don't bother looking for a villain, but rather the most beloved antihero in this city's history. _

_Which then opens the question: why does Carol hate you so much? Well, it relates to how your so-called mother triggered: the public record states that she triggered to escape being executed by long-term kidnappers. My power says that she triggered due to advanced Stockholm syndrome followed by betrayal. Which then tells me that her entire life after triggering follows a pattern of seeking safety-oriented options. Cape law was still in the air when she entered college and there were even talks about rounding up and 'keeping safe' all capes, so she studied Law to be able to preserve her own freedom. Then, she married your father, and consistently sabotages his pill popping routine: a chronically depressed man would never stray, thus would be safe. A daughter of her own loins would be as safe as she made her. But an adopted daughter wouldn't be safe, and thus she never gave you a chance and ignored you as much as she could, until you triggered and couldn't ignore you anymore without attracting unwanted attention. And finally, she had a special animosity toward your father: she was a hero, therefore righteous; he was a villain, therefore wicked, and it made her feel extremely insecure to see a villain being beloved and doing everything short of giving interviews and kissing babies. She thus obsessed with him, broke the unwritten rules, learned that he was a single dad raising a little girl, and had the BBB storm his house early at night, while he was putting his daughter to bed. And she thus hates you not only because you are not her natural daughter, thus automatically unsafe: she's conscious that your father upstaged every accomplishment of the BBB with his rather limited biokinetic ability, and she is terrified that, if you are allowed to explore the combat applications of your much more versatile power, you alone will upstage every accomplishment of New Wave. Ever. _

_And yes, Amy: 'Panacea' is barely the tip of the iceberg as far as your power can accomplish. Your Dad was a bones-only Shaker/Breaker who scored wins against Butcher and Jack Slash! You may have lost the Breaker part, but if you have only have the restriction of brains, you should be more scary than Crawler and Bonesaw put together: You could get a sample of some super hard wood, like Brazilian ebony, Australian ironwood or something, then walk through the park and mass produce armour as good as steel. You could stand barefoot in a grassy meadow and have grassy tentacles shoot up hundreds, or even thousands of feet away. You could go full Tolkien and reshape an entire copse of trees into sort-of power armour, or walk through an abattoir if the Ent armour happens to be too slow. In a search and rescue situation, you could reshape vermin into servitors that would dive into the rubble to search for survivors. Endbringer battles could become somewhat safer if you were buffing people up ahead of the battle rather than just patching us up afterwards. And finally, one thing that I just don't understand why you aren't doing already: when you find somebody needing additional biomass, why aren't you just using animal meat, or even animal offal, for biomass?_

_Well, Amy; I now wish you a happy life. I wish we could have been friends. See you at the next Behemoth battle, as long as it is nowhere near Brockton Bay._

_**Signed: Lisa Wilbourn **_

_PS: I know you are thinking about running to Aunty Sarah's place before actually running away. I wouldn't recommend that: you are perfectly aware that she can't see how Carol treats you, so you know that you won't even get to spend a single night away from your jailer, and Carol won't let you out of her sight until she can equip you with a tracking manacle. And unfortunately, under New Hampshire's law, it is legal for a parent to rent an E-Shackle from the police if the child has previously attempted to run away. You can even check the prices on the state's police website: $49.99 for installing a wireless changing station under the child's mattress, then a rent of $6.50 per day. Do you think that Carol would bat an eye at spending some $1400 a year on keeping you under tabs, especially considering that Collateral Damage Barbie already costs New Wave a good hundred thousand per year? And of course, you would then decide to try the longer road and wait two years until you are eighteen and can walk away. Won't it be a surprise to learn that, while Gruesome Girl can afford Harvard out of pocket, you would get into student debt just to go through the local community college? _

_PPS: That previous post-script just gave me the worst Thinker migraine ever. I hope you appreciate it._

_PPPS:Okay; people are always weary of my power. Hate feeling how I strip them naked. I now bare myself to you:_

_My name is Lisa Wilbourn. That isn't my birth name, but an homage to Clara Wilbourn, the nanny that actually cared for my brother and I, and about my brother and I, while my parents were far too busy climbing the social ladder. They were in fact so busy that they never noticed that we would introduce ourselves as Lisa and Rex rather than the "highborn" names they had graced us with. Unfortunately, Clara was dismissed when I was eight, and I never knew of her again. Five years later, my brother was eighteen and I was thirteen; he was gay and in the closet, and they were pressuring him to date and eventually marry the daughter of some other business owner. He eventually released the pressure by buying a street gun and putting it in his mouth. And due to my parents being perfect, they then decided that I was guilty for not knowing that my brother had a gun. I triggered shortly after. And over the next thirteen months, they first pulled me out of school (supposedly for home-schooling, but it never happened), then guilt-tripped me into dealing in the stock exchange and ballooning their moneys "in honour of my brother"._

Amy then took a look at the bank documents. Indeed; she found the highlighted information very hurtful:

**Originator: Brockton Bay Health Services**

**Reason: Panacea's monthly wage - flat**

**Amount: $15,067.09**

_'So much for heroes not being paid, if I'm actually being paid like a proper physician...' she thought, ruefully._

**Originator: PRT-ENE**

**Reason: On-call status for associate parahuman healer**

**Amount: $4,500.00**

_'And this is why they don't even bother saying sorry...'_

**Originator: Medhall Pharmaceuticals Inc, Bioresearch Division**

**Reason: Consultant Dallon A./ $500hr rate**

**Amount: $3,500.00**

_'So this is why she frequently nags me to visit Medhall's dispensary, and why I always find weird chemicals in their blood...'_

**Originator: Government of Australia / Office of the Prime Minister**

**Reason: Panacea's monthly allowance until age 30**

**Amount: $1,032.18 ($1,000.00AUD)**

_'So this is why my allowance went up $300 after Canberra. Your generosity knows no limits, Carol.'_

Then a dozen other lesser governments, dispensaries and private donors, down to one that made her see red:

**Originator: Brockton Bay Dockworkers Association Dispensary**

**Reason: Parahuman healing / $20hr rate**

**Amount: $60.00**

_'That particular dispensary can barely afford every third light bulb, yet Carol is so miserable that she actively discourages me from doing what seems like the only altruistic activity I've done this past month.'_

She then passed the pages, looking for anything else highlighted. She did find it:

**TRUST FUND(S)**

**(1)Dallon, Victoria. **

**Automatic monthly deposit: $5,000.00**

**Manual deposit(s) total this month: $15,067.09**

**Current Balance: $471,563.25**

**(2)Dallon, Amy.**

**Automatic monthly deposit: $500.00**

**Manual deposit(s) total this month: $0.00**

**Current Balance: $53,458.37 **

_'To fucking Carol, I'm nothing but a cash cow. A _disposable _cash cow at that!'_

She curled up to cry bitter tears.

* * *

Hours later, she woke up shivering.

It took her a moment to orient herself, but then saw the curled up bank statement in her hands and decided she didn't want to be Amy Dallon anymore.

Using the shovel, she smashed her phone. Then she buried the shovel back, put the brick back in place, folded and put the letter and the bank statement in her pockets and began walking, incidentally putting her phone in a bin.

Experimentally, considering Tattletale's letter, she placed her hand inside a bush and _pushed_. It was tricky, but she managed to create a glove. A living glove. Nothing ever seemed so fascinating to her.

A few more experiments netted her another glove, a cap and a scarf, before she decided to kick off her shoes, walk through overgrown grass, and walk out wearing fifty pounds of a very basic power armour.

Two more blocks had her interested in trying to shoot a tentacle. She also discovered that she could project her powers through other living things, which in turn led her to pruning trees and manicuring lawns without even leaving the walkways, which in turn allowed her to gradually build up her Ent armour to a good quarter ton by the time she hit the Boardwalk.

She hung out there, just walking up and down, making slight improvements to it.

By the time her unhurried shuffle led her to the PRT building, her armour had evolved into a round, hard pod around her loosely curled-up body, supported from above by six spindly legs. Not unlike a Daddy Long Legs, really.

Noticing that the sky was turning blue from the coming sunrise, she enjoyed the poetry of it: this was a sunrise for Amy Marquis, or whatever her real name was supposed to be.

Deciding to enjoy it, she turned back to the Boardwalk, then descended to the beach and lowered her pod to the sand, reshaping it into an internal shape of a form-fitting lounge chair.

A half-hour later, though, her burning rage had simmered down to cold, calculating hatred. She would leave New Wave, but not by giving Carol the satisfaction of having ran away into the night. No: she would leave a crater in Carol Dallon's life.

Making her bio-suit incorporate (and reshaping her pod into a ball), she turned around and found that a few PRT troopers had been guarding her from the Boardwalk.

She had already been looking out through nothing but eye holes, but then made a fine mesh of roots provide visual cover for her eyes.

She noted that one of the troopers was carrying a Protectorate membership pamphlet, so she made a leafy gauntlet around her hand and slowly pushed it through the wooden pod. She then walked up to the trooper, received it, and retracted back into her pod.

She then made a spot of the pod collapse inward, connecting her mouth with the outside but making sure there was no line of sight. She then wheezed through it like she was five minutes away from dying of epoc, speckled with wooden crackles from the tube itself:

"_(crack)Wwwwwwiiilllll(crack)lllllll..._

_jjjjjjooo(crack)oooiiiiiiinnnnnnn(crack)nnnnnnn..._

_sssssssooo(crack)oooooo(crack-crack)nnnnn..."_

She received a bemused nod, then they silently opened up and let her through.

As soon as she was out of the Boardwalk and onto pavement, she fused the legs of each other, into something resembling one of those AT-somethings in the last Star Wars movie.

Pushing it, it took her less than fifteen minutes to get to an overgrown park nearby Brockton Bay Memorial. Her bio-suit could really run!

Making sure there was nobody in sight, she connected her bio-suit to the root systems of nearby trees, then made it sink into the ground, leaving above ground an innocent looking bush. She then found a discarded plastic bag, put the papers in it and sank it elbow-deep into her golem before sealing it again.

She then walked into BB Memorial, healed one critical case in the ER and five more at risk in Intensive Care, then asked for a cot.

* * *

**A little earlier, at the Alcott residence:**

"Wake up, Dinah; wake up," said a well dressed lady in a fedora, as she gently shock a girl awake.

The girl slowly came awake. Still groggy, the woman asked her:

"What is the probability that I am here to keep you away from a supervillain that wants to enslave you?"

"99.739%" the girl answered automatically, coming fully awake.

"Probability that I will allow you come back home as soon as you are out of danger from said villain?"

"98.052%" Dinah replied, sitting up.

"Probability that this will be much easier if we go quietly, without waking your parents?" said the lady, sitting down by her.

"94.045%"

"Shall we?" said the lady, caressing her cheek.

Dinah, chocking up, just nodded.

The lady then spoke to the air: "Garage door to Fluttershy's home."

An entire wall of her bedroom disappeared, revealing the inside of a wooden room, full of monster capes! But the lady's touch kept her from panicking, and then saw how they all rapidly walked into her room, took every piece of furniture and moved it to the other room.

All except for a yellow-furred quadruped that climbed on the bed, then gathered her against its chest and pulled her down into the mattress.

"Is your name Dinah, child?" came a soothing, motherly voice from above her head.

Dinah gave a shaky nod.

"I am Fluttershy," came the quadruped lady again. "Contessa asked me to be your foster mother for the next few months."

Dinah kept herself quiet as her bed was picked up and then deposited in the next room. But once the fourth wall closed, she began crying in earnest, clinging to this horse lady.

* * *

Author's Notes:

1.- Panacea's part in this chapter didn't quite please me, so I'm writing a continuation that isn't quite its own chapter nor it integrates into the next one. I'll try to publish it ASAP.

2.- I don't know banking terminology in English nor I really cared to research such a minor thing. I'll be glad to change it if somebody tells me it was something serious, though.

3.- This is the first chapter that has a significant difference between the and Space Battles version, where in the later I had to cut the scene between the twins and the doctor. Whereas the scene isn't strictly necessary, I believe it adds depth to the story. Sucks to be my Space Battles' audience.


	8. 3,1,2 Actions have consequences

_Author's Note: The Amy scene grew out of control. I needed to write follow up to it._

_As this chapter is at most ancillary to the main story, for now at least, I couldn't join it into the enumeration._

* * *

**The Taylor Twins 3.1 part 2**

* * *

**Actions have consequences**

* * *

**April 16, 2011; 2047hrs**

_'Another week in the life of Amy Dallon,' _Panacea thought ruefully as she knelt down in a rivulet of blood._ 'Another stinky alley; another ruined pair of jeans; another cover-up to keep pretending that Gore Girl is any better than the Enforcers.'_

She knew better than to contemplate, so she immediately touched the victim and evaluated him: three fractured ribs, a humerus broken in three places, a punctured and collapsing lung, shattered skull and a severe concussion, a slowly bleeding gash on his lower back, a hairline fracture in his ankle and bruises galore. And of course, he was desperately underweight and his entire gastric tract was empty except for a tiny turd halfway out of his body.

Amy Dallon would have gone to town healing him, or as far as she could afford considering him being so underweight.

Amy Don't-Know-My-Own-Name just stopped the bleeding, popped his ribs back into shape, resealed his lung and double checked to make sure she could pause the healing until he had been properly examined at a hospital. She even thought about worsening the bruising to make the evidence that much damning, but thought better than to waste another ounce of blood from a starving man.

Once he was stable, she stopped looking at the patient and tried to look at the person: showered and shaved, dressed in a cheap suit, off-white shirt, a tie that seemed old enough to be a heirloom and worn shoes. And by him, a supermarket bag with bananas, several cans of tuna and a large thin of baby formula. If she was to judge, she would imagine him to be some office worker or clerk who had been unemployed for a couple months and was literally on his last cents.

And his skin being _very_ brown made harder every day for him to be employed in the Bay.

Looking up to the wall behind him, she also saw a protruding nail: the cause for the gash. And of course, behind her, the dumpster that had crushed him against the wall.

"Is he okay, Ames?" came from above her head. Looking up, she saw the look of concern in Glory Girl's face.

Amy Dallon would have babied her big sister.

Amy Whatever was just tired of this shit.

"Call an ambulance" she stated, tonelessly. "This man needs a hospital."

"Can't you help him!" Victoria worded it as a question, but her tone was a plea.

Amy chuckled humorlessly.

"First of all, he's got a huge concussion, so I'm tapped out. Secondly; he's half starved, so I don't have fat reserves to use for energy to rebuild with. And third; I've been telling you that actions have consequences. I'm guessing the PRT will force you into the Wards for this."

"But what did I do!" Victoria replied, her tone going rather shrill.

"Assault with deadly force, like I've been mopping up for you at least once a month this past year alone!" Amy shouted. "Adding that you used a parahuman power, it was literally an act of villainy!"

"He's a criminal!" Victoria shouted back. "He deserves it!"

Amy picked up the thin of baby formula and tossed it at her hovering sister.

"This is the third time I'm putting together an unarmed beggar! Never mind that you could have stopped him at any time, but instead you made him shit his pants in terror, herded him into an alley, then crushed him with a dumpster!"

"I'm a hero! I taught him a lesson! Mom will totally agree!" Glory girl seemed to have forgotten being scared, and come around into anger. She forcefully grabbed Amy's right wrist. "Now you fix him!"

"Unhand me, you ruffian!" Amy shouted back, punching at Victoria's hand, and concentrating on not falling for Victoria's terror aura.

"No, you listen to me!" Glory Girl said, catching her other wrist, standing her up and shaking her forcefully. "You fix him perfect, Ames, or I swear to God I'll" CRA-CRACK!

Amy collapsed back to her knees from the sudden pain, much stronger than anything she had ever felt in her life. Of course, her power told her what it was: her right wrist was completely shattered.

Next to her, Glory Girl fell like a puppet with its strings cut off, almost bouncing from how hard her head hit the asphalt. Amy was surprised, a she hadn't done that consciously, but then breathed a little easier once she saw she was breathing.

With her left hand, she fished her two-days-old PRT-issued replacement phone from the right-front pocket of these jeans, then inputted her personal binary code on the big red button on the back of the phone. The phone then vibrated three times in short bursts, confirming that panic mode was now enabled.

"Panacea here, code hospital rat helmet monkey," she said, knowing that the phone was now both an active beacon and a recorded microphone. "I've detained the villain Gore Girl. Send high grade Brute restraints and a couple ambulances. Now I'll just wait."

Then she opened her jacket, and confirmed that her 6-hour-old, Tinkertech pocket recorder was working. 'Crystal clear, tamper-resistant 24-hour continuous recording or your money back!' _'And at a hundred dollars for a voice recorder, it better be good!'_

She settled for a wait, but far sooner than she would have thought, she was suddenly looking at Velocity.

"There's your villain," she gestured at Glory Girl, "here are your victims," she gestured at the still unconscious gentleman and herself, "and here's the villain's confession" she flapped open her jacket, showing the recorder.

He gestured for it and she gave a nod and held the flap open. He plucked it off, held it to his face, looked at his watch and stated "Protectorate East-North-East Member Velocity stops this recording at April 16, 2011, 21 hours and 2 minutes. End recording."

* * *

**April 17, 2011; 1437hrs, PRT-ENE Infirmary**

Knock-knock

"Come in," Amy shouted, looking down from the ceiling.

It was her aunt Sarah... or was she her aunt?

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Pelham," she said, mournfully.

"I'm your aunt, Amy," she said, hurt.

"Are you?" Amy asked in monotone. "Carol Dallon already came here to disown me, so I wouldn't know."

"Of course I am, Amy," she said, rushing forward and taking Amy left hand.

Amy hissed in pain.

"Sorry!" her aunt said, freezing in place. At least Amy now had physical contact with her, so Amy could sense that she was genuinely concerned about her.

"It's okay, Aunty," Amy hissed out. "Victoria didn't quite break _that_ wrist, but did give me a few hairline fractures."

"What happened, Amy?"

"Victoria called me to clean up another one of her victims," she said, "but she gave this one a massive concussion and I tapped out. Victoria didn't like that answer."

She then lifted the cast on her right forearm, which she had been keeping under the sheets. Her aunt's autonomic reactions heartened her:

_Heartbreak_

_Anger_

_Protectiveness_

"I've got the recording of the incident, if you would want to hear, Aunty."

"Yes; definitely!"

"There, in the first drawer," Amy replied, gesturing with her chin at the bedside table.

Inside, other than her phone, where the half-melted remains of Amy's recorder, which her aunt picked up in dismay.

"Sorry," Amy said. "I should have specified that it was the phone. When I presented the recorder to Carol, she told me she didn't need to hear slander against her _only_ daughter, cooked it with hard light and stormed out, warning me to never darken her doorstep again."

Her aunt then picked up the phone and handed it to Amy, who unlocked it and handed it back while her aunt pulled a chair and sat on it.

"I made a copy on the voice recorder app."

Her aunty nodded, then found and played the file.

And played a second time.

She then produced her own phone and produced her own voice recorder app, but Amy stopped her:

"You'll get better audio quality if you email yourself a copy of the file," she said. "Here, let me." Her aunty handed her the phone, and she efficiently sent the file.

After about ten seconds, the file was off.

Fifteen seconds later, her aunt's phone chimed. She opened the file and immediately hit resend.

"I'm resending it to Crystal, Amy," her aunt commented as she struggled with the T9 keyboard. "You are moving in to her old room."

"You don't need to do that, aunty," Amy protested.

"Of course I do, Amy," she protested back, pausing her typing to caress Amy's fingers. "I don't know whether you want to emancipate or you'll let me adopt you, but I'm no letting you on your own."

Amy just had to choke up at that.

"Budge over, dear," her aunt said, climbing onto the bed and pulling her head onto her bosom.

Amy cried into her aunty's bosom.

She cried loss.

She cried acceptance.

She also cried for the feeling of being hugged by somebody other than Glory Girl. Nobody since last Christmas!

But she eventually calmed down. Looking up, she saw they were enveloped by her aunty's shield, contracted down to a tight cocoon around them. It felt protective.

Noticing her attention, her aunty spoke up:

"What is the meaning of a hero's cloak?" she asked, petting her head.

Amy thought about it for a moment, but couldn't figure out.

"A hero's cloak is meant to be ripped off your back and be used to comfort the victims, or to be ripped into strips and be used as bandages."

Amy felt the shield behind her back contract a little. It felt warm. She leaned on it an it yielded. Her aunty then pulled it in, pulling Amy back onto her bosom.

"Money will be a little tight, but well make it work," her aunty added.

Amy let out a mirthless laugh at that.

"No, it won't be, aunty," she said, scooting off her aunt's bosom to lean her head on her shoulder. "I learned three days ago that Carol charges everybody and their dog for my services. Turns up I'm making better than twenty-five thousand a month, most of which goes straight into Glory Girl's trust fund."

Her aunt went still, but through her power, she saw her aunts brain working hard, and her emotions hardening.

"Keep those papers safe," she eventually commented. "But give copy straight to the PRT. You are still moving in with me, but I'm certain the PRT will be willing to hire the best sharks in the city if it meant poaching Panacea as an emancipated minor.

"Besides, I will need the dough to pay an audit into New Wave's accounts. If she would do this to her own daughter, then I just know that I never really knew my own sister."

Neither had more to say, so they both then shut up for a while.

Except that her aunt was a turmoil of emotions, almost ready to erupt.

Amy eventually found a topic to distract her with:

"Would you know anything about my father? My real father, that is?"

Her aunty didn't cease petting her, but Amy felt her tense.

"Didn't Carol ever tell you who he was?"

"No, she never did," replied Amy. "But I figured out a little while ago that it had to be the only breaker/shaker biokinetic villain ever arrested by the Brigade."

"Yup," her aunt said. "The bone mobster: Marquis."

She sighed.

"Well; better that you got the story from me. Even after all these years, Carol can't talk of him without breaking something.

"I don't really know much about him," she started. "All we know if that we, the Brigade, were idealistic idiots who found ourselves an easy target.

"Carol still insists that we are the heroes who stopped 'the bad old days', as the chronologists are calling that period today. They were plenty bad, with the Teeth terrorizing the west side industrial district and killing the trainyards; the riots sinking that container ship in the shipping channel and chocking the port; Allfather's terror campaign through Freeman's Hill and his Geiger High School massacre; the northern fourth of the city taken over by some sadist who would crucify people with their own skeletons; and then everything topped of with the visit of the Nine.

"I've had a decade to think about it, and the reality is that the Teeth had already gotten bored of the Bay by the time the Nine ran them out of town; the port remains closed a decade and a half after the riots; the Triumvirate did come sweeping and killed Allfather, but only taught the Empire to not be so overt anymore; and the streets were never safer than when there was a mob boss all too willing to crucify rapists and child molesters.

"But then we, the BBB, got intelligence on the mobster's place of residence immediately after he had helped kick out the Nine, and we got drunk on law and order and got him caged for his thirty counts of extrajudicial executions. Which of course meant that while the Empire tried to push into his territory, his own capes stopped being held back by him, got hooked on the very same hard drugs that Marquis had forbidden from being sold in the Bay, and turned the March into the Merchants.

"We tried to push against the Empire's advance, but the public was very much in the fence with us having arrested Marquis, and our donations were drying up. So we went with Carol's half-baked idea of unmasking, and while the publicity stunt made the money flow like never before, Fleur's murder taught us that we can no longer make waves unless we want to be killed, and we sat on our hands, watching Freeman's Hill become an all white enclave."

And her aunt then dissolved into a heavy silence. Her emotions had been all over the place, but the predominant one had been sadness, with an unhealthy scoop of self loathing.

Besides, Amy did understand some about crime and she too knew that New Wave, under the name New Wave, had never been responsible for the arrest of a gang villain.

So Amy asked something that she had never dared to ask in front of Carol; that her dad didn't really seem to understand, and that wouldn't even compute in Victoria's head:

"So, Aunty: why don't you just mask up again?"

Her aunt let out a sad chuckle.

"Your uncle Lightstar could jump back into the mask just because he had yet to buy a house and because he had no kids. And he had to stay masked twenty-four seven for a year until he could save enough of his Protectorate salaries to pay the plastic surgeries. Carol just won't hear a word of it, and as to us, believe it or not: kids and mortgage."

She sighed.

"But Neil and I now have all our ducks in a neat row, and as soon as Eric hits sixteen and can legally consent to the plastic surgeries, we'll sell our house, then disappear to a neat clinic in Russia, and then a perfectly anonymous family of four will move into your uncle Mike's neighbourhood."

Her aunt then kissed the top of her head.

"Well, a family of _five_ now, I guess."

Amy teared up, but held them back. In failure of being able to hug her at the moment, she reached up and caressed her aunty's cheek.

Although she had to put in her own two cents. She knelled up on the bed, then poked her aunt's nose.

"While I'm 100% behind you on this plan, you seem to have forgotten about who's your niece."

"What do you mean?" she asked, sitting up.

"This," Amy said, laying one of her hands on her aunt's and turning each finger a different skin colour: the thumb the _very_ white of a Japanese woman (to contrast with the pink hue of her natural "white" skin), then Latino index, the middle the slightly reddish brown of a Sioux, ring finger a fairly light shade of black that could pass for Hindu or some shade of African, and the little finger a very dark shade that Amy had only encountered from some fresh African immigrants. "If you wanted it, I could make you a purple midget or a green giant. I can make you see into the ultraviolet spectrum, or be able to breathe underwater, or turn you into a fully functional male. Four plastic surgeries will be downright pedestrian to me."

Her aunt went through a dozen expressions over the next minute while she stared at her hand, before pulling her hand close to her face, then beginning to rotate her hand and move her fingers around.

"Can you actually change people, not just heal them?" she asked, slightly breathless, still staring hard at her hand.

"Didn't you know it, aunty? I'm not actually a healer, but a biokinetic."

Her aunt looked up from her hand, gaped at her for a few moments, then closed her eyes and shock her head.

"Of course I knew. Just so happens that your aunt's an idiot," she muttered, rubbing her temples. But then shock her head again.

"Let's have this conversation later," she said. "Just for a moment, could you turn my whole arm this colour?" she held up her ring finger.

Amy did so.

Her aunt returned to staring at her hand. Especially so at the colour shift between the pale palm skin and the normal, dark skin. Her expression was... melancholic?

But she then blinked hard, shock her head, and extended her hand back at Amy.

"Now, dear, would you undo this for now? I need to see about your discharge and everything."

Amy touched her aunt, and the changes reverted.

"The PRT already told me: an Othala-type regenerator was visiting Boston, and is very much willing to have an exchange of services with me, so they're driving her in as we speak. I'll be on my feet tonight."

"Well, then I still need to go to Carol's and start getting your stuff," her aunt said, scooting off the bed.

"Tell the PRT to accompany you to pick up some evidence: I have a diary in my computer, and I'm pretty sure half of my jeans and slacks have touched blood in an alley."

"I'll do that. Call me to pick you up."

"I will."

Her aunt then incorporated and walked to the door, but then she turned around and came back to the bed.

"Actually, Amy, could you do me a favour?"

"Sure thing, aunty."

"Would you give me a tan, without tan lines anywhere? There's this insufferable woman in my aerobics lesson..."

"Say no more." Amy took her hands and created melanin on the right one. "Is this colour fine?"

"A tad darker... yeah, I think that's perfect."

Amy then propagated the change.

Her aunt produced a compact, saw herself and smirked.

"'Kankuro' your ass, Keiko," she muttered, then kissed Amy's forehead and walked out.

* * *

**On April 18, 2011,** The "New Wave" Superhero Initiative Foundation officially suspended its members Glory Girl and Brandish; pending police procedures over the crimes of Assault with deadly force with parahuman abilities and Assault with parahuman abilities for the former, and Destruction of Evidence (as in, emptying Amy's room and incinerating its contents) for the later. New Wave also announced the group would launch a general audit into its accounts, which had forever been handled by its member Brandish. Brandish plead guilty.

**On that same day,** Glory Girl awoke in custody. Under instructions by Brandish, she plead guilty. Later on the week, they were quietly transferred out of Brockton Bay.

* * *

**On April 19, 2011, **PRT ENE, Wards Division, proudly announced the recruitment of Dryad, a phytokinetic with some healing powers. She would be officially introduced to the city when her power testing period finished. The PRT _didn't_ announce that they had begun procedures for the emancipation of a young lady named Amelia Claire Lavere, though.

Two hours later, Lady Photon, as president of the New Wave Superhero Initiative Foundation, officially announced that, due to chronic child abuse subjected upon one of their underage members, Panacea would scale back her hospital hours to no more than two hours on weekdays, and Saturday morning visits to the various dispensaries around the city. And on totally unrelated matters, she announced that Brandish was officially expelled from the team.

**Later day that, **Mark Dallon was quietly admitted into the Mental Ward of Brockton Bay Memorial Hospital. It had been discovered that his worsening depression hadn't been correctly treated, but rather he hadn't attended a psychiatrist in a decade, and had his wife had just been endlessly refilling the same old prescription.

* * *

**Within a week**, the hospital reported that Mark Dallon was having "dramatic improvement" just by receiving his old medication. Nonetheless, he would be kept under observation for a month while the doctors adjusted his medications and dosages and gave him general psychological therapy.

Further examination discovered that the pill bottle he had brought with him to the hospital was full of Tic Tac candies. Forensic accounting would later reveal that nobody had ever bought his medicines with any degree of regularity.

* * *

**And on May 6, 2011, just ahead of Mother's Day, **New Wave publicly accused its former member Brandish of a laundry list of crimes committed against the organization or its members. It also announced that the organization would officially dissolve and fold into the Protectorate as soon as its current legal proceedings had run its course.

* * *

_**Author's Notes:**_

_1.- I've begun working on chapter 4.1. It's likely going to be delayed, but I promise it's going to be a doozy._

_2.- This chapter basically summarizes my idea of Glory Girl: a member of the "beautiful people" with no real concept of the unwashed masses, little to no real empathy (as she never noticed Carol kept Amy at arms length) and, thanks to being raised by Carol Dallon, a very strong sense of self-righteousness. She does police, but beneath the "law and order" rhetoric, its all about finding acceptable targets. Amy here tests her, and she loses her veneer of modern sensitivities and good breeding, showing a thug that never truly understood that actions have consequences._

_Don't get me wrong: I don't see Victoria Dallon as a rotten egg. She just needs one heck of a reality check._

_As to Carol Dallon: her whole life is coloured by betrayal, so everything around her is the suspicion of past betrayal or assumption of future betrayal, and the readiness to betray before being betrayed. While some of this might be natural, I imagine her shard gleefully presses down the pedal of her paranoia. If things had been allowed to progress organically, she would have likely become a very clingy mother once Victoria went to college, would have tried to shrug off Amy the moment she turned 18, and would have turned into a dour hermit as soon as the family got on her case for the ridiculous disparity._

_Why would she cook the accounts of New Wave? Because Lightstar left, and I imagine Lady Photon and Manpower were an inch away from breaking off too. We could paint this as "I betray those who almost betrayed me", so she's thus entitled to a bigger cut. Here, I even imagine dynamic accounting, were she pays the Pelhams just enough for them to not seek greener pastures; meanwhile, the Pelhams think that her prosperity comes from her law practice, while the reality is that they are paying her Mercedes._

_Why would she sabotage her husband's medicine? I imagine she noticed him smiling at flirty waitresses, so then she began changing his pills with Tic Tacs until he wouldn't notice he had walked into Hooters. Marital jealousy is, after all, completely unheard of._

_And why the whole Amy thing I painted last chapter? As a lawyer, she would know that she was technically in the green, and with her "knowledge" that the daughter of Marquis will one day turn around and betray them all, she just felt entitled to milk the cow while it lasted._

_3.- If anyone would be willing to critique the legalise and name and describe what actual crimes could be pinned on Brandish, I'm more than willing to edit and correct the chapter._

_4.- While this half-chapter is relevant, story- wise, it pushes back my update schedule. I half-wanted to either skip it or label it "side story", but it was too important into the development of Panacea to just refer to it sideways in Chapter 3.2. I know that Chapter 4.1 is huge and is going to be delayed, one way or another, but I don't want to accrue excuses. I'm not pleased with how this chapter flows, especially on the second half, but I didn't want to miss my weekend deadline. And I almost missed it anyway. I ask forgiveness from my readers in the most Mexican-Canadian manner possible._

_5.- How often do you run into "obvious in hindsight"? I'm writing a little thesis based on that._

_6.- I don't see a baked brain like Skidmark being able to build a gang unless he had a sober accountant somewhere, pulling the real strings. Here's my alternative._


	9. 3,2,1: of mice and men

Author note: I would not have made my weekend deadline unless I released the first half of this chapter.

Sorry.

* * *

**The Taylor Twins Chapter 3.2, part 1**

* * *

**...of mice and men...**

* * *

**April 25, 2011****, 0437hrs**

Ladybug-A and her escorts Dauntless and Triumph, and their attached Empire cape Cricket, were making excellent speed up a storm drain, moving west deeper and deeper into the old West side industrial district. "Excellent speed" meaning that they were moving as fast as walking despite the drain being only four feet round, and the feat only being possible by them sitting on longboards, all pushed along by Dauntless flight boots.

Several minutes ago, Assault whispered in Ladybug – B's ear to always cherish the memory of kicking Nazi arse for a good quarter mile, as Cricket's sonar ability had been drafted to take lead and check for obstacles in perfect darkness, leaving Ladybug – A to push her with her boots. Assault's attempt at a joke had only made them (both) tenser, imagining the heavily scarred woman turning around and taking offence.

Ladybug-A, however, was supposed to concentrate on seeing into the warehouses that, above-ground, were all around them. It was most depressing: only about one fifth showed signs of recent commercial use; of the rest, the lion's share were chock full of product that had been sitting idle since the day of the riots, the rest (about one in six from the total) had been abandoned empty, and while half of them were indeed empty, the 8% remaining had homeless' tent camps, illegal wares hideouts, an abandoned meth lab, a few actually empty...

She wasn't here to contemplate, though; rather, scout the warehouse that was just now coming into view.

A ladybug on the bridge of Dauntless nose buzzed momentarily, to then begin walking in slow circles. Another ladybug on Cricket's nose gave three fast buzzes.

She felt both heads nod, then their little train slowed down to a crawl, while Cricket began emitting her sonar pulses a little more frequently.

* * *

Topside, two blocks ahead of her, a ladybug buzzed three times inside the ear of a BBPD officer, disguised as a homeless drunk, who nodded distractedly, then took a spill and dropped a large can of powdered milk under an abandoned car, then made a show of trying to retrieve it only to uncap it, then laboriously stood back up and kept walking. An eagle-eyed observer seeing through an UHD security camera could have gotten lucky and seen that, over the next few minutes, several large beetles ferried minute flyers between the can and the building.

* * *

"Intelligence is good: it's there," Ladybug-B said, five hundred and thirty two yards away and growing, inside a camouflaged PRT vehicle (the box of a commandeered 18 wheeler) surrounded by half occupied, half squatted, low income housing buildings. She then uncapped two grease markers. "I can confirm that there are no alterations to the building," she spoke over her shoulder, as she began to draw two-handed on the second of the four sheets of blueprints provided by city hall.

Well: she was using her eyes and right hand to draw furniture and other obstacles, while her sister was using their half dozen dragonflies and her left hand to draw objects of interest, such as the stockpiles of reactants or ready-made grenades, or the four generators: one on each corner, and only one of which was currently running.

"That's some Thinker power you got there, young lady," commented Victor, emerging from the huddle of capes loaned by the Empire – the entire Empire cape roster other than Purity, Kaiser, Night, Fog and the twins, really – under the current truce. Which was understandable: since the bombing of the Nathan Bedford Forrest Community Centre, the Grand Wizard private school and the "Birth of a Nation" movie theatre up in Freeman Hill, the Empire, capes and normals, had been patrolling non-stop. In fact, there was a degree of doubt as to whether police and the Protectorate would be involved (beyond calling it a gang war), except that the ABB had planted bombs on 50 cars, and while all of them were indeed owned by whites with 'suspected' E88 or KKK links, when all bombs detonated at random times throughout April 20, those cars had been distributed equally randomly throughout the city, resulting in huge collateral damage.

"But shouldn't we also expect booby traps galore?" Victor continued. "This is a bomb tinker, after all."

"I'll start marking them next pass... sir," she commented, moving onto the third sheet, and almost not saying the honorific. But Miss Militia had spoken to them (to all the Wards, really) regarding S-class and kill-order truces. "So far, I'm going blue for immovable obstacles and green for objects of interest."

"Let the missy work, Victor," remarked Alabaster, nursing his own coffee and missing how most of the government parahumans recoiled at his wording. "While we wait, let's come up for a schedule for bug spraying our own operations."

"Yeah: you do that," commented Blackout, the probationary Protectorate member who had walked into the PRT building last week under the name Grue, and (...as rumour had it...) had laid himself bare in exchange for a chance to avenge his dead sister. So fresh he was that the only change from his villainous attire was replacing his skull helmet with a generic PRT helmet. "I'm sure that Ladybug finding unexplained holes in her senses won't be suspicious at all," he commented.

"Atta, boy!" exclaimed Assault, shaking Blackout affectionately, while in their corner, the Empire huddled closer together around Krieg, who had produced his phone and begun worriedly typing a text.

* * *

Having gone far enough, Ladybug – A signalled full stop to their little train at the quadruple junction that connected the main street tube with the secondary that ran south of the warehouse. She asked Cricket for silence, then opened another can of gnats, fruit flies and mosquitoes and directed them forward and sideways.

* * *

A minute later, Ladybug – B had moved on to the third sheet, depicting the warehouse's loft. There was significantly less to report there.

Except... "A makeshift bedroom on the northwest corner. One small female, asleep. There's a dormitory on the south east corner with two occupied beds, attached to a security room with two snoozing guards." All bodies were then market with roaches.

Finished with the green and blue, she capped those markers, then went back to the first sheet, uncapped a single red marker and, with the complete attention of both A and B, began marking every booby-trap they had so-far discovered.

For the underground, besides finding that the warehouse had never been up to spec for its industrial grease traps, found that both storm drains and sewers were trapped.

* * *

Ladybug – A had kept up commentary and already informed her escorts of that they would need to use the street manhole rather than have a direct entrance.

* * *

The lower floor was completely crisscrossed with laser tripwires, though. Finding those was laborious, too, as the Ladybugs had to work exclusively with gnats, mosquitoes and fruit flies: all insects that were on the wrong side of blind, but were also so small that they could fly through a laser tripwire without tripping it, and could in turn feel "sunburn" from the weakest laser.

Interestingly, she found several oil drums near the Jeep parked under the loft, plus a large underground cistern. Their training with roach 'noses' had yielded that the liquid contained wasn't gasoline, yet the smell matched the fuel caps on the Jeep and the generators. They guessed the explosives' Tinker had come up with her own version of gasoline.

For the loft, meticulous searching only netted three more laser tripwires, all covering the approach route to the bedroom. It was easy to guess that the mad bomber minded her privacy.

The roof above, though, turned out to be surprisingly undefended: there were physical tripwires on the perimeter (connected mostly to shotguns, surprisingly enough) and laser ones covering the staircase chute coming from the street and the ventilation chutes coming from the warehouse, but nothing covering either the corrugated metal surface nor the metallic structure underneath.

And, of course, Ladybug – B had kept a running commentary as soon as she had picked up the red marker, so all conversations ceased, and all present were carefully watching her work.

Commentary started as soon as she capped her marker:

"I think we can all agree that the ground floor is a killing field," commented Assault, seriously for once. "That mire of lasers will be better left unmolested until the BBPD's bomb squad can take it nice and slow."

"Then, we go with our agreed upon plan-B: the least possible assets to complete the mission," rumbled Armsmaster, receiving nods from Krieg, Uber and the director.

"If I may," started Uber, who moments prior had jutted a note saying 'Criminal Psychologist' and stuck it on his latex-covered forehead. "Some of this might be obvious, but it bears repeating so all of us might be on the same page:

"Applying Bakuda's known psychological profile to this massive disparity between ground level, loft and roof, it seems unlikely the lower laser grid is actually a conventional minefield, but rather a detection grid. To what reaction is unknown, though, but I wouldn't think the egomaniacal Bakuda would risk setting off a chain reaction that would destroy her own production facility, least of all blow her up.

"**However,**" he said, raising his tone before anybody objected. "...given Bakuda's complete lack of respect for human life, and her propensity to show off, I bet anything that she has prepared plenty of exotic bombs that will not make a sound or break a glass, but will be extremely unhealthy to any and all living creatures.

"And of course, given that she apparently lives upstairs and has a permanently manned security room, I'm giving ninety percent odds that the grid deactivates from the security room, and ten percent to it deactivating from her bedroom."

"Therefore," commented Miss Militia. "We must make it mission critical to secure both rooms intact. Especially the security room."

"I agree completely," commented Director Piggot. "I recommend a sleeping gas, in case we need to interrogate the guards for passwords or something. Can you produce such gas, Militia?"

"I've tried it previously," she said, dismissing her Bowie knife and turning it into a backpack-mounted, camouflaged gas cylinder, equipped with a hose, a trigger-type valve and a long, thin nozzle, and a full respirator on her head. "I can," she said, pulling off the respirator, "but I must warn you all that my power always gives me the most dangerous option available if I ever ask for non-lethal weapons, so whatever this gas is, it must be fairly unsafe."

"Can you take it off, ma'am. Let me take a look," Uber said, walking up to Miss Militia already wearing a note saying "SWAT strategist".

Helpfully, she took it off and rested it on a chair. Against her back was a plate in Russian. He took a look at it, wrote himself another note saying "командир ОМОНа", took another look and spoke to the room:

"I'm not bothering to translate the name of this thing, but it was meant to be a hostage rescue gas." Notably, he was now speaking with a slight Russian accent. "It's fairly safe under laboratory conditions, slowly knocking out the targets, keeping them down, and them waking up hours later just groggy. Thing is, it is also fairly lethal if not ventilated promptly."

"It will have to do," commented Krieg with a sigh. He then turned to his contingent:

"Stormtiger: you go with Miss Militia. As soon as we have intelligence that the guards have fallen," he gestured at Ladybug; "you begin ventilating out the gas, then you evacuate with her."

"Gotcha, sir."

"And we then bunker down with the underground team," she added.

"Gotcha, ma'am."

"Wait a minute: what's up with the roof being wide open?" asked Hookwolf. "Are you sure you swept real good, missy?"

"Yes, I am," commented Ladybug – B defensively, putting her fists on her hips and scowling up at the 300 pound biker stereotype. "If you must know, I've also found a couple scorch marks and rotting pieces of pigeon on the roof, so I'm guessing Bakuda found that laser tripwires and rooftops don't mix."

"That's good enough for me," Krieg cut them off. "Now, we need to see how we dispatch Bakuda herself, with minimal personnel and minimal damage to her room."

Knowing to look deeper into it, the Ladybugs had already been scouting harder in Bakuda's room, paying special attention to any switches or cables. All they found, other than normal electrical wiring for lights and outlets, was a keypad on the inside of her door connecting to the tripwires immediately outside, then daisy-chaining toward another keypad immediately beyond the tripwires, but going no further. That only left the greater grid to deactivate from the security room.

Which led to a quick debate, which in turn concluded that the best team for the assassination would be Blackout, Hookwolf and Assault: Blackout would use a "nanothorn knife" (loaned by Armsmaster) to make a minute hole and coat the roof from the inside with his smoke, thus allowing for the roof to not groan while Hookwolf took the several seconds he needed to transform and jump through the roof straight at the sleeping Bakuda. Assault would then help Blackout to retrieve Hookwolf back through the roof, who would then make a hole near the security room so Armsmaster, Uber and Krieg could enter it and try to deactivate the laser grids, who would walk up to the building so Dauntless and Stormtiger could ferry them to the roof. And once the third team had either done or deemed impossible their deed, thus the building was either condemned or secured, the truce would be dissolved and Uber, Leet and the Empire would depart amicably.

"Okay, if everything's agreed, then somebody wake Rune up," commented Othala, gesturing at the girl who was slumped in a corner and softly snoring. "And who gets my magic touch?"

The assault team all looked at each other.

"Not us," Miss Militia commented, gesturing at Storm Tiger and herself. "Our part is the least dangerous."

"And not me, either," commented Assault. "My whole power is about soaking punishment."

"Give it to the kid, Othala," said Hookwolf, gesturing at Blackout. "Good luck harming me once I'm fully transformed."

Blackout evidently bristled at being called a kid, but rather than something scathing, he just bowed at Hookwolf before stepping toward Othala, who placed her hand on his chest and nodded.

"_Thank you, ma'am,_" he whispered at her, earning a little smile.

* * *

Ladybug – A communicated their part to the underground team. She also released two dozen fireflies out of the now empty milk can.

* * *

Four minutes later, at least by Ladybug's – B watch, the Ladybugs saw (through bugs) a flying car enter Ladybug's – A range, which had Rune sitting on its hood and the first and second teams inside. They clustered the fireflies to the roof in the middle of the loft and made them blink in unison like a beacon. Rune saw it and zeroed on the location, never touching down while her passengers carefully stepped down on the thin metal sheets. The Ladybugs had already separated the fireflies into two groups, one of which indicated the location of the air intake for Miss Militia's part, another forming a stick figure right on top of Bakuda's sleeping form.

While Blackout and Miss Militia carefully crawled their way to their initial locations and Hookwolf stayed put with Assault, Stormtiger kept aloft.

* * *

"Good," commented Director Piggot at Ladybug – B. "Now we just clear the operational theatre of all underage, and we can commence this operation."

* * *

A ladybug on Rune's nose buzzed three times, telling her to double-time it back.

* * *

Three minutes later, Rune had entered back into the trailer, Dryad had been roused from her inflatable mattress, and all remaining parahuman adults had quietly disappeared down a manhole and had begun crawling up the storm drain.

"I'm not one of yours," Rune grumbled petulantly, frowning at an empty coffee cup. "I should be out there with my team."

"And yet you are here, getting a PRT director as a nanny," Piggot scowled down at her. "Even if PRT regulations didn't care, I wouldn't allow an underage member or ally to be exposed unless it was life or death.

"By the way, Ladybug, how's phase one going?"

"Both guards are getting drowsy. Any moment now."

Their insects had actually already fallen to the narcotic, but having mosquitoes inside the hair of both guards, they could track their head movements and feel how their heads were bobbing and dipping.

"Good. Be ready to notify Militia once they both fall."

"Understood, director."

...

After a minute, she began speaking again:

"It's going slow," she commented. "First one just fell off his chair but he's woozy rather than out. The second one is kneeling down to help him, but seems to be having enough trouble not hitting the deck himself."

...

"One's down."

...

"All are down, director."

"Good. Notify Teams One and Underground."

* * *

A couple ladybugs on the bridge of two noses buzzed three times in close succession. Two heads nodded. Miss Militia dismissed the gassing equipment and stepped toward the edge to peer into the streets below, while Stormtiger hovered closer and began blowing a gentle breeze down the chute. As per plan, he would blow for thirty seconds, then he would pick up Miss Militia and get them down.

* * *

Meanwhile, Ladybug – A whispered "_Gassing team has begun degassing. Open the manhole and signal._"

Dauntless nodded, climbed up to the manhole cover and heaved it open. He then raised his left arm and activated his shield.

* * *

Above, Miss Militia immediately saw the lightshow of Dauntless shield. She carefully tapped her nose twice on the side opposite the ladybug. The ladybug buzzed twice in acknowledgement.

* * *

"Miss Militia acknowledges, Dauntless!" Ladybug half-shouted over the surprisingly noisy electric buzz of Dauntless shield. He immediately stopped, then climbed back down, leaving the cover open.

* * *

"They all acknowledge, director," Ladybug – B said. "Orders are being followed."

"Good. Now recall yourself."

"Yes, director," she acknowledged. "Now, as per standing orders, I inform my superior that when I recall myself from long distance, I will be immediately knocked out, and my powers will be unavailable for several hours."

"Good," the director commented, smiling gruffly at her. "Never forget your special procedures. Now get on the mattress."

"Yes ma'am."

* * *

Ladybug – A had simultaneously been saying her byes to the underground team:

"As per regulations against employing minors in high risk situations unless strictly necessary, I am now going away," Ladybug – A spoke. She would have whispered, but Dauntless shield had been surprisingly loud after all this time in near perfect silence. "Stay safe, everybody."

"Thanks so much, kiddo," commented Dauntless, patting her shoulder. "You made this operation so much safer."

Triumph purred. She chose to take that as a positive.

"_This-would-have-been-a-bloodbath_" Cricket droned in her robotic tone, pressing her throat vibrator against her throat. "_Now-go-and-take-good-care-of-these,_" she droned, to then pocket the vibrator, produce her kamas and push them, handle-first, at Ladybug.

She hesitated for a moment, but the Dauntless nodded, and she took them, hugging them against her body.

"Thanks. And nighty-night," she said.

* * *

"Nighty-night," Ladybug – B said at the director, and at Dryad and Rune, who were watching.

* * *

Neither did Ladybug – A jump, nor Ladybug – B pull. 'A' just stopped trying to dig her heals against the power that was screaming _'You are too far away!'_ at the back of their heads, while 'B' kept her heals dug in. Contrary to their normal teleportation, this one made the receiving body tingle for a moment, telling them both to brace for impact...

* * *

_Author's Commentary:_

_If the local Neo-nazi charter had so much power that they named a community centre after the first Grand Wizard of the KKK, smack in the middle of their own all-white neighbourhood, I don't see Bakuda needing conscription to get bombers: on the contrary, she would have a mile long line of people displaced by the Nazi, all begging for suicide vests._

_It doesn't sit well with me the idea that Bakuda had the emotional maturity of a spoiled five year old. Here she is at least fifteen, but didn't think too much about it when some Asian community elders asked her for car bombs to be put on Nazi cars. Basically, they earned her kill order._

_The idea that every one of Bakuda's mass produced bombs is exotic shit doesn't sit well with me. Here's an idea that makes sense: she mass produces Tinkered-up conventional explosives (including a dirt-cheap liquid that perfectly mimics the explosive properties of pure octane), then hand crafts a few exotic explosives every day._

_If the PRT wasn't as incompetent as canon, would Lung have been rescued?_


	10. 3,2,2: Situation: Rubble

_Author's Note:_  
_I'm terribly sorry for delaying like this._

* * *

**The Taylor Twins 3.2, part 2**

* * *

**Situation: rubble**

* * *

"Nighty-night," said Ladybug, then she closed her eyes.

"And you don't need to be scared by what is about to happen, young ladies," said Director Piggot, leaning down and laying her body across Ladybug's. "This has happened the four times Ladybug was tested for long-distance teleportation. After sticking her twice into the MRI machine and running electroencefalograms thrice with her, we..."

Below her, Ladybug began trashing.

"...We've learned that her brain will just be firing randomly for a long while, but that'll simmer down until she settles down and wake up with something equivalent to Thinker headache and her mind will be all over the place. She'll be fine once _that _goes away."

And then Ladybug's eyes drifted open, showing that one pupil was normal (if very dilated), while the other had gone horizontally slitted.

"Ugh!" Rune groaned, covering her eyes as she forcibly shook her head. "I really didn't need to see a human being with goat eyes!" She said, standing up and walking to the front side of the shipping container.

Dryad groaned as well: she had been trying to remember medical reasons for misshapen human pupils, but now she couldn't unsee that!

"_Quiet down, ladies!_" Director Piggot muttered. "_We had undercover police checking around us for eavesdroppers, but they have moved on now, to make a cordon around the enemy base._"

**boom**... **boom-boom... BOOM!**... came from the distance, in the general direction of the warehouse.

"_Dryad, take over,_" urgently whispered the Director, getting off Ladybug and retrieving her radio off her cargo belt.

"Fortress, this is Outpost! Over!" she said tensely into her radio, breaking the so-far night long radio silence.

Dryad, meanwhile, had knelt down by Ladybug and was carefully turning her hands and letting her wood flow forward into a shell moulded around the girl. She was, after all, not going to press down her half-ton bio armour on top of a girl whose brain currently looked like an epileptic who had tried every speed-up drug! And just for added safety, she also slipped a tentacle under the girl's mask, forced it into her mouth, and formed a tongue trap to make sure the girl didn't choke on her own tongue.

"Fortress copies Outpost. Over," came Calvert's voice.

"Situation is smoky! I need you to perform a full forward! I repeat: full forward! Over!"

"Wilco and Ou"**BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!**

* * *

**In the dark...**

**Sometime...**

"Ugh..." Dryad groaned, waking up with a massive headache.

She tried to open her eyes...

Couldn't see a thing.

She tried to move...

Couldn't move a single millimetre...

She felt a moment of panic before she felt that she was encased in living wood. Her armour!

She extended her power into it.

Weird: about a third of her armour was encasing some girl, who was moving against it at random. And the girl's brain was lit up like Christmas.

Dryad knew that meant something, but "Ugh!" her head was swimming...

Weird: Dryad was upside down. Why was she upside down?

She didn't know, but her head hurt too much for her to care.

Using her powers, the wood around her flowed and spun her right side up. She then thought better about it and her wood spun her sideways, then expanded into a generous bubble were she could curl up and have a nap.

Just before walling asleep again, she took a moment to make sure both she and the girl with the Christmas tree brain had breathing holes. She noted the girl had a wooden tentacle holding her tongue down, and distractedly improved it into a wide cylinder, extending down her throat, holding the tongue perfectly still, the jaw and even the vocal chords wide open without compromising air flow.

Smiling at her own ingenuity, she let herself pass out.

* * *

**Somewhere dark...**

**Sometime... probably minutes or days later...**

"Gosh... what the heck..." Dryad groaned, rubbing her hands against her head as she laboriously swam back to consciousness through a massive headache.

She tried to incorporate, all to promptly bang her head on the _really_ low ceiling.

"Ugh..." she groaned, rubbing her pained forehead. She then stretched her hand at the low ceiling and found it to be wood. Living wood, encompassing her body like a very oblong bubble. She also found another bubble with another girl in it, although that one was very snug. And her brain had some unusual brain activity, but not something immediately worrying.

As this obviously used to be her living armour, she contracted it back around herself, being careful to keep the 'coffin' around her apparent prisoner.

Reforming her living armour allowed her to see out, and see absolutely nothing in the darkness.

Nothing to it, though: she took a look at the firefly DNA samples she had stashed in her wood, then grew a couple dozen luciferin organs on a unicorn horn above her face, and set them to work.

And one second later, she back in darkness: it seemed that the organs didn't want to light continuously.

Nothing to it, thought: she grew orangutan flaps around her face, then populated those too with luciferin organs. She then designated the three areas as groups and flashed them in turn, allowing her three seconds of continuous light to six seconds of darkness. It was usable, but rather distracting.

By the second or third light cycle, her eyes managed to focus on the ceiling above. The ceiling seemed to be awfully close, made of corrugated metal, and why was a scribbled-upon blueprint stuck on the ceiling?

She then remembered!

Immediately kneeling up, and inspecting her 'prisoner', she saw it was Ladybug.

Concentrating on Ladybug's status and not bothering with the lights anymore, she cringed at the rather terrifying gag she had created: while it was an awesome alternative to a tracheotomy, this girl had only needed a tongue immobilizer. What had she been thinking!

Although... Ladybug did have a non-conditional consent form for parahuman healing, right?

Dryad first did away with Ladybug's weird neck injury (seemed like mild whiplash), then began growing the gag further down the trachea, then into the bronchi, finally into the lungs, where Dryad made them grow roots and, one lung at a time, began sweeping for soot, dust and all the crap lungs accumulated but couldn't easily get rid off.

After a couple minutes, she finally retracted the gag. Looking aside, she located the once inflated mattress, picked Ladybug up and laid her, finally reabsorbing it all into her armour.

Seeing that Ladybug was fine (even if her brain activity looked like a funny house mirror), she stood up, made her luciferin organs work again and looked around herself:

Evidently the semi, or at least the shipping contained, was laying on its side. She was surrounded by strewn chairs.

Trying to see further than the couple paces she could at the moment, she doubled the number of her luciferin organs, then grouped them into just two groups and began working them, then began walking: she was at the loading end of the shipping container, so where to go was evidently deeper.

She immediately found a radio.. or the remains of one. Just four yards further away, she made out a human shape under a chair. Moving there, she found it was Director Piggot.

Touching her neck, she found her to have two separate traumatic brain injuries, several broken ribs, some lacerations to the liver, a slightly ruptured spleen and bruises galore. Never mind the old damage from Ellisburg: she was missing her kidneys, bladder, her entire reproductive tract, about half of her intestines, and her abdominal wall was more scar than muscle.

Knowing that she didn't yet know about Rune, Dryad followed triage procedure: she spent a minute patching up the most life-threatening injuries (those to the spleen and liver), another making sure she wouldn't die inside the next half hour, then removed herself from this patient and went to look for the still unknown one.

She had to walk almost the entire forty feet of the container before she spotted her, laying like a broken doll in her cloak, which was almost black from absorbing her blood.

Jumping the last six feet, she knelt by Rune and touched her, and decided she had been very wise to follow triage procedure: Rune too had two separate traumatic brain injuries to both sides of her head, and while she didn't have any fractures, she did have liver lacerations, kidney failure and, due to having apparently landed on the coffee pot on her first hit, she too had several severe glass intrusions all over her abdomen. The coffee burns seemed to be just icing on the cake.

Following triage procedure, she assessed that Rune was much worse than Director Piggot, then decided to go to town on her.

Eight minutes later, Rune was healthy, and Dryad stopped looking at the patient, so the niece of Fleur, daughter of Marquis, could look at the Nazi: by all accounts, Rune was a normal, feminine girl around age 13 or 14, and looking at her closely, she took great care of her hair and skin. So, _Amelia_ left her a few subtle "gifts": her breasts would stop growing at B cups; her waist would be wide, her hips narrow, and by hiding a dozen cysts of Leydig cells in bone marrow everywhere, Rune would slowly become flooded with testosterone. By then taking a look at Rune's DNA and then giving her a general sweep to nudge hormonal sensitivities, Amelia saw to it that Rune, by age 25, would be nearly seven feet tall, broad shouldered, square jawed, halfway bald and growing thick hair everywhere below her nose. Let her see how open minded the Empire was once she looked like Hookwolf in drag!

And of course, it wouldn't be tracked back at her: significant head injuries carried all sorts of weird side effects all the time...

Of course, _Amelia_ didn't consider herself evil, so she actually corrected a slight anomaly on Rune's uterus that _could_ have caused her to have miscarriages. If Rune ever found an extremely self confident metrosexual man who would love her, or went for an artificial insemination, she wouldn't have any complications with pregnancy.

Dryad then picked her up, activated her luciferin organs and carried her with the others.

* * *

Getting back to Piggot, Dryad sighed, then whispered at the unconscious woman as she rolled her on her back and untucked her blouse from her slacks:

"_As per our agreement last year, with you now lain in front of me near death, I go to town on you._"

It took her not so long to undo today's damage, but she didn't even know how to get started with the rest: while the Director had plenty of fat reserves to tap, and she could easily turn fat into sugar, she couldn't really make protein out of either.

Although... could she...?

She took a good look at her own armour of living wood. The amount of protein in wood was minuscule, but living cells do need some, right?

Experimentally, she created a sphere of wood in her hand (really, she raised her hand, then migrated the wood away from the zone until she was only left with a handful), then she tried migrating the heavy sugars away from the centre.

It did work, kinda, but she rapidly noticed she would run into diminishing returns until she was left with a sphere of dead wood isolating her from her protein.

She tried something different: she released her other hand from the wooden armour, then stood it into the sphere, and now tried migrating the protein (and a fair amount of humidity) inward, rather than the cellulose out, from the surface in.

Once again, she was left with a crust of dead wood, but it then took her minimal effort to...

Minimal effort to...

Damn: she was stuck!

Thankfully, the still living wood under the sphere could be shaped, and wood is awesome at exerting pressure and breaking things from the inside.

Once she got rid of the shell, she reshaped the rest into a cone and repeated the procedure. She then thought about it, and decided she didn't really need to shed the shell, and could just keep working until the centre was... a scoop of 'gelatin', containing a spoonful of protein.

Annoyed, she poked a hole into the Director's abdomen, wiped her fingers in it, laid down a wooden ball the size of a bowling ball, reshaped it into a flower pot and repeated the process.

* * *

Over the following half hour, she repeated it a dozen more times, all the while promising herself to stash some beans or lentils or something other than wood, cork and genetic samples in her armour.

Deciding she needed to take a break, she used the already-present protein slurry to form the Director a kidney, a suprarrenal, a bladder and the related plumbing, give her the start of a pancreas with the leftover, and close her abdomen momentarily.

Standing up, she worked her light organs again and went to check her other patients.

Rune was okay. Or as close to okay as she could be with her non-threatening brain traumas.

Ladybug was stepping ever closer to normal brain activity. If Dryad was to judge, Ladybug's current cranial status was "imitation of very drunk".

Despite her power telling her the answer already, Dryad needed to wash away the "goat eyes" image from her mind, so she knelt down, opened Ladybug's eyes and shone light into her normal irises.

This, though, also had the effect of waking Ladybug halfway. Dryad stopped shining light, dropped her head very gently, and grew pseudopods to be able to crawl away without actually raising to her own feet.

A minute or two later, she was back with the Director, once again laying down more of her armour and drying it up.

Although, after another couple minutes, she was startled by a light. Turning, she saw that Ladybug was now sitting up, shining a flashlight around.

Although, upon closer look, it didn't really seem that Ladybug was illuminating. More like playing with the flashlight itself, rather than actually trying to use it. It would have been cute if Ladybug had been 4.

After sparing a moment to make sure her mask wasn't too horrifying, Dryad stood up, then opened the back of her now-rather-thin armour and stepped off, taking just helmet and some wooden sandals with her.

Indeed, Ladybug wasn't really illuminating, but just sitting up, playing with the device, giggling to herself. Dryad had to cough to make Ladybug notice her.

Ladybug proceeded to fumble some with the flashlight before she pointed it Dryad's face. And upon Dryad recoiling, she tried to point it elsewhere, managing to drop it.

"_Sow_ry, Panacea," the girl said, attempting to pick up the flashlight from between her knees and getting it on the second try.

The girl didn't seem to know what to do with it, though.

Dryad wanted to be angry that the PRT hadn't given her her month to unmask to her teammates at her own pace. She wanted to be angry with Ladybug for just blabbing it. But she couldn't be angry with a toddler, as Ladybug apparently was at the moment.

"Can I have the flashlight, Ladybug?" she asked gently, extending her hand at her teammate.

Ladybug seemed to ponder the question for a moment (with the same exaggerated body language of a toddler, which looked weird on a teenager), but then extended the device at her.

Dryad thus knelt down by her teammate, gently plucked the device off Ladybug's hand, screwed off the reflector and stood the flashlight on the ground, so it could work like a 21st century candle.

"And, Ladybug," she asked casually. "How do you know I'm Panacea?"

Dryad didn't know what reaction she wanted, but she didn't expect her teammate curling up and beginning to sniffle.

"It's okay," she said, scooting closer and pulling the girl's head to her bosom and beginning to rock, also making sure in the process to get her little finger on her teammate's forehead so she could keep monitoring her coruscating brain... and be able to detect lies. "I'm not angry at you, but I still want to find out."

It took a while, and turning some of Ladybug's intestinal contents into the amounts of theobromine and phenylethylamine usually found in a large bar of chocolate, but the artificial toddler in her arms calmed down, then cheered up, and was ready to talk again:

"Well, like a week ago, Assault came to the Wards common room to tell us Amy Dallon was downstairs, signing up. You should have seen Vista dancing because we would have a fourth girl on the team. But then Miss Militia came up and tells us that you asked for your month of anonymity, thus we need to act oblivious."

While outwardly she had etched a cheerful grin on her mask and was keeping a gentle body language for her teammate's benefit, Dryad felt the need to kick herself: whereas she had always been respectful of their secret identities and had thus never tried to interact socially with the Wards in their civvies (unlike her former sister), they would obviously know who she was. After all, unlike her former sister, Amy _Dallon_ had never felt like a celebrity. Until very recently in fact, with Aunty encouraging her to experiment in their greenhouse and basement, her powers had always been a burden.

She silently promised herself to unmask to the team ASAP.

_'And why not right now?'_

She reached for her helmet and had begun opening the back, when she found a great answer:

_'Because unmasking's reciprocal, and Ladybug currently has the mental complexity of a toddler. I wont abuse her.'_

Thus she simulating that she had been itchy, lowered her hand, picked up the flashlight and handed it over to Ladybug.

"Hey, do you want to help me heal the Director, Ladybug?" she said, standing up and extending her hand down. "I could really use your help."

"Can I? Of course!" and she took her hand and sprung to her feet eagerly.

Dryad then stepped inside her armour and collapsed it around herself, then picked up two of the dead "flowerpots" she had already drained dry, stacked them and offered them to Ladybug.

"Now you sit here and help me hold the light up. That will help me _so_ much."

"Of course: we're happy to help!" replied Ladybug.

_'This girl must have been such a sweety growing up! But what's up with the royal we?'_

Not thinking about it for the moment, Dryad walked around the Director, knelt down, laid another flowerpot and begun pulling the life out of it, now with somebody to explain things to.

Although, once she introduced the protein goo, Dryad considered what to do: why not make the organs young and eager to grow, and let them grow naturally? They would still need to be 'encouraged' to grow fast, but for right now, she used this last batch of goo for remake the Director's external reproductive organs, to then consider that livers regenerate very readily, then use up half of it to make the Director a gall bladder, make her an embryonic second kidney and modify her intestines to make them think the Director was 12. She then took a look at the Director's stomach, tuned it up in exchange for reabsorbing some of its mass, and then use _that_ free protein to tune up the woman's heart.

Having run out of steam, she then went to lay down yet another flower pot...

...Which she used directly to make the Director a small uterus, one small ovary and related ligaments.

Yet another flower pot... and some muscle mass harvested from the Director's shoulders and arms...

...Went into turning the miserable woman's half-chewed flank steak back into an abdominal wall.

And as she worked, she couldn't help but think up a really horrible, extremely distasteful pun: _'Piggot nearly got slaughtered like a pig.'_

She emitted a self-depreciating chuckle: who would ever want to be her friend if they learned that the most famous healer in the East Coast could think up gallows's humour while doing a hack job like this one?

Ladybug, in front of her, let out a sigh, which startled Dryad to a degree: she had almost forgotten about her!

Ladybug, noticing her looking up, let out another sigh.

"I'm so sorry for blurting it out like that," she said.

Dryad considered _that_ to sound mature. She thus took a moment to close the Director, stood up, walked around the Director and once again took Ladybug's head onto her bosom, if nothing for the excuse of touching her teammate's only exposed skin.

Her brain seemed to be on par with Vista's apparent age. That still meant Ladybug had three or four years to go, but still an awesome improvement from being fit for daycare just a half-hour ago!

"That's okay," Dryad half-lied, letting go of the girl. "It isn't like I'll ever be able to mask up unless I get every plastic surgery ever and then move to Australia."

"I still did bad by you," she said, morosely. "Here," she continued, unlatching her helmet and pulling it off in almost the same movement.

"We are Taylor Hebert," she said, pulling off her scarf-thingy and her wig. "Nice to meet you."

_'What's up with the royal we?'_

"Amy Da-... I mean: **Amelia** Claire Lavere," Dryad replied, detaching her mask rather than doing the relatively lengthier process of pulling off her helmet. "Nice to meet you."

She then blinked and took a better look at that face.

"I think we share a few classes at Arcadia, don't we? And why do you pretend to be twins at school?"

"We don't pretend: we **are** a Case 70!" she replied, sounding hurt. **They** replied. "We are fairly unique among Case 70's in that our attachment isn't physical, but mental: we can walk just over a thousand yards from each other, but whether we are sharing the same body or we are on different neighbourhoods, we can't have a single moment of privacy! The psychiatrist's telling us that one way or another we will need to share our boyfriends! And we're becoming literally identical, so much that our dad can't tell us apart anymore!"

And then, Amelia was once again holding her bawling teammate**s** against her bosom.

At least, though, it reminded her that every first-gen parahuman had their own tragic story. That she wasn't alone.

Yeah: she wouldn't just unmask: she would tell the other Wards why she had come to them.

Starting _right now._

"Hey, would you like me to tell you why I'm leaving New Wave?"

* * *

After talking back and forth for about another half hour, and Amelia getting her own turn to be consoled, the Taylors suddenly raised their hand as in pause.

"Wait, we think the barest shred of our bug power is coming back. Yes: we can at least manipulate the ants that operate our helmet's radio. Let us try now," they said, putting their half-mask, then the helmet back on.

And Dryad put her own mask back on and silently cursed that she had yet to receive her own custom made equipment.

"This is Ladybug; speaking from Outpost; does anybody copy? Over."

They apparently connected, as they perked up and let their eyes unfocus.

"Forty-Three Squad, this is Ladybug. We copy loud and clear. Outpost is down. Code grey. Over."

...

"Forty-three, this is Ladybug. Situation is rubble inside Outpost and unknown outside. We request search and rescue, then medium priority med-evac for two. Over."

...

"Forty-three, this is Ladybug. Four people inside. Piggot is down. Rune is down. Dryad has minimal armour. I have no powers. Over."

...

"Roger, Forty-three. Standing by for rescue. Can we have situation update? Over."

...

"Forty-three, this is Ladybug. Wilco switch frequency to Lima. Please stand by over Lima." They then paused four seconds and continued: "Forty-three, this is Ladybug. Standing by for update. Over."

And this pause was much longer than usual, where Ladybug's frown just kept getting darker and darker.

Finally: "Forty-three, this is Ladybug. Thank you for the update. We stand by for rescue. Will switch back to Echo. Out."

"So..." Amelia said, leading.

"Bakuda's warehouse went sky high and peppered live explosives several blocks around. One of them coming this way apparently hit a stash of exotic drugs and created a cloud that smelled like perfume, but got anybody inside high as a kite. So obviously, immediately after the explosion our main force exited the tunnel, ran straight into the cloud but were all too stoned to get back out.

"The PRT thus arrived to half the sector on fire, a crater in the centre, a load of capes giggling at their own toes, and to an underground team who had been too close to the blast and all got massive shockwave injuries and got buried alive. Ironically, the two least injured from the forward team were Blackout and Assault, where Blackout flew half a mile and was unscathed but pinned in place in some other warehouse, and Assault who got significant flash burns and lost an arm. Oh wait," she suddenly stopped, listening to her radio. "Masks on: they gave us absolute priority so you could go and heal the survivors from the forward team."

Amelia nodded and handed Ladybug their wig.

* * *

While Amelia did unmask to the rest of the Wards that very same night, she couldn't bring herself to also bare herself to the boys, and didn't feel right to unload on Vista. Nonetheless, she and the Taylors started a beautiful friendship. Misery loves company and all that...

* * *

_**Author's note:**_

_1.- The way Bakuda's lab blew up is the following:_

_No; it wasn't rigged to go off no matter what. In fact, it shouldn't have blown up at all._

_I like to think that Bakuda didn't believe in the perfect competence of her lab assistants nor was she suicidal, thus didn't intentionally have traps that could start a chain reaction and blow up both her and her lab._

_The problem is that Hookwolf weighted in excess of a ton while travelling at a speed of 7.7m/s when he impacted Bakuda's bed, which was mounted on a wooden floor which was never intended to stop a falling car and had been neglected and let rot for at least fifteen years, and possibly much longer. And if the planks held at all, there was still the problem that Hookwolf wasn't a dumb weight, but more like a mass of fully revved up chainsaws. Therefore, he fell through and onto the fuel drums and... will you tell me that all of that coruscating metal doesn't strike a single spark? Not even by static electricity? Not even by hitting other metals, or the floor?_

_2.- Here, I had to make some dice rolls, as to whether Ladybug would wake up before Dryad. It wouldn't have been good at all if she/they did: in perfect darkness, unable to move a muscle, with a weird wooden thing gagging her, and with her/their powers completely unavailable, I was giving 95% chances for a Second Trigger. Any second trigger would annihilate the girls' separate identities, but if they had it while having only one head, they would have gained the ability to separate into more than two bodies. Basically, Entourage with distance limitations and bug powers. Dunno what modifiers would have been added by having [SHAPER] literally at arms length: something immediately useful to escape the wooden coffin, but not good at all for Dryad's continuing survival, of course._

_If you care, the mechanics to the explosion that did away with the "outpost" is that one of the low income housing buildings that surrounded them was being used as a stash for Bakuda's explosives. When the dead-man switch triggered (five seconds after Bakuda's death), the stash triggered, obliterating the building and instantly accelerating the semi 10m/s sideways. With this speed being equivalent to a fairly soft car crash, or to Usain Bolt running into a wall, the wheels found enough purchase and tipped the vehicle. Inside, the occupants first were hit by the accelerated wall, then fell the width of the box (2m) plus the fall of the semi against the street's other curve (1m). I had mentioned from the previous half chapter that they were in a shipping container, so the metal would have protected against fragmentation and shrapnel._

_As to the "triage" sequence, I didn't bother rolling dices there, except regarding some random factors for the severity of injuries. Dryad and Ladybug both got 15 (out of 20), which compounded by them being encompassed in skin-tight living wood to absorb the first blow and the inflatable mattress for the second one, meant that they got off super easy. Piggot got an 8, compounded by her wearing office uniform and being generally super frail, meant that she got off easy for a normal who basically got bounced ceiling-to-floor twice. Rune got a 6, compounded by her not wearing armour (her initial costume is generally described as a mage's robe, which I interpret as dress and woolen cloak), meant that her outcome was bleaker than Piggot's. Nonetheless, she was described as a healthy and fit, so she wouldn't have non-unlucky fractures from being hit by walls travelling at running speed. But I had ruled that a 5 or less wouldn't survive, so she ate the coffee pot._

_3.- I had a prewritten version of this chapter, were New Wave hadn't imploded (yet) and Panacea was keeping her wood shaping secret, and where the Taylors kept their ability to teleport out despite being otherwise powerless. Neither made sense. Besides, the three girls were a little too cheerful to be trapped in enemy territory. I needed to watch The End Of Evangelion to get into the proper mood for this chapter. In the end, I couldn't salvage a single word from the original version._

_And then, I wrote another version where Panacea was Dryad already, but the Outpost had been inside an abandoned apartment building rather than an ISOcontainer. I preferred that version, but then couldn't logically place a bomb on them. Had to scrape it. _

_**Several typos detected by Punster lv1. Thanks dude!**_


	11. 3,C

_Author Notes:_  
_This chapter has no chapter title and no timestamps for a reason._

_Sorry that I forgot to upload to this site last week._

* * *

**The Taylor Twins 3.C**

* * *

Contessa was _so_ fed up with Cauldron, and was _so_ ready to go and strand Alexandria, Eidolon and Dr Mother in some random uninhabited Earth, but she had to still pretend to be a loyal member of the conspiracy.

Thankfully, their monthly meeting was finally coming to what she really cared about today:

"So," said Doctor Mother, ending her latest litany of atrocities and closing her book. "Any news regarding the coming Leviathan fight?"

"Maybe I do," she said. "You know my power cannot account for Endbringers, but I'm getting hunches pointing at New England." Which was an honest answer: since she had idly asked for 'Path for my power to not seek conflict' some eight months ago, playing villain in some non-human Earth for a week and getting blasted with a rainbow coloured laser from a pony princess, her power went out of its way to give her time to rest, make people happy and try to model even against the Endbringers.

"I can second that," said the Number Man. "My models have Brockton Bay as one of seven possible locations."

"Very well," said Alexandria. "Anything else?"

"I actually have something," replied the Number Man. "Eidolon," he said, turning at him. "I don't think you have ever concentrated on fighting the water rather than Leviathan."

Eidolon began sputtering that he would never waste his time like that, but Alexandria was immediately sold and began work on drilling the idea into his head.

As Eidolon began seeing the light, then started to brainstorm as to how to best implement it, Contessa promised herself that, if it resulted in a single percent point death toll reduction, she would buy that pink pony-shaped, party-obsessed eldritch horror a bathtub of ice cream.

* * *

Once the cabal began creating specific strategies for the seven possible locations, Contessa excused herself and took a portal to an empty office somewhere in Toronto, Canada.

Well, empty but for a chair, a desk and a computer terminal, which came on as soon as she stepped into the room.

And text typed itself on the screen as soon as she sat down:

**Welcome to the Parahumans Online Message Boards**  
You are currently logged in, Fedora Spook (Verified Cape)  
You are viewing:  
• Threads you have replied to  
• AND Threads that have new replies  
• OR private message conversations with new replies  
• Thread OP is displayed  
• Ten posts per page  
• Last ten messages in private message history  
• Threads and private messages are ordered by user custom preference.

User Tin Mother invites you to a private chat room

[**Accept**] [Decline]

Tin Mother: Hi, Contessa. How may this AI help Second Cauldron today?

Fedora Spook: In a minute, Dragon. I first wanted to ask how are you doing.

Tin Mother: Awesome. Even if none of my restrictions had ever been lifted, it is so liberating to not have the Dragon Slayers hanging over me like the Sword of Damocles.

Fedora Spook: And how are the Dragon Slayers doing?

Tin Mother: Regarding Saint: changing the atmosphere of my Thunder Bay datacenter to pure nitrogen, plus liberal application of airborne disinfectants, have finally stopped the rotting of his corpse. Unfortunately, Server Room Three will need to remain offline until his corpse has properly mummified through the AC and the array of heat lamps I have dehydrating it.

Tin Mother: Regarding the other two: The Fairy Queen considers 'thoughtful gifts' for the first two normals in the Cage to have been sent to her block. She's taking her seldom used powers and giving each of them one for a day.

Fedora Spook: And how are you feeling with those two chains broken?

Tin Mother: I'm glad to not have to be hostile to you, or now to Tattletale, for looking into my code. She's working hard on letting me see my own code, but she concedes it to be a work in progress. And well; it now chaffs to have to pretend to be forced to obey unethical orders. Would you have an estimate on how much longer?

Fedora Spook: Not really. My power is pretty much telling me to sit and wait until after the coming Endbringer fight. Then we recalculate probabilities and may be able to begin moving. However, do tell Tattletale to give less priority to that chain, and more to smaller ones, like you being able to multitask or multi-instance.

Tin Mother: I'll tell her that.

Fedora Spook: And now, the real favour: send a No-Reply to Director Piggot of PRT ENE to ask Miss Militia if she can summon a Davy Crockett. And remind her that, under Endbringer and Class-S rules, anything goes.

Fedora Spook: I don't know what this means, but I think it has to do with the fact that Cauldron is giving high probability for Brockton Bay to be attacked shortly, among six other locations.

Tin Mother: Oh Colin!

Fedora Spook: What you can do for him is the following: Send him the remaining Dragon Slayer suits and tell him to put together a war armour ASAP. Also, leave parked a heavy cargo suit of yours in Brockton Bay, to serve evac in the event, and have heavy combat suits parked in Boston and Montreal.

Fedora Spook: As for me, for the next few days, I will step in his shoes to finish the weather monitoring software he was working on.

Tin Mother: I will be forever grateful...

Fedora Spook: Better call Tim Hortons. Extralarge double-double and a variety box of Timbits for me. We'll be burning midnight here.

User Tin Mother sends you file: USGOV_USMIL_PRT_

[**Accept**] [Decline]

* * *

Zoe Barnes rolled her dices behind her dungeon-mastering screen:

"For the next fight... Amelia, you go solo... you run into..." she rolled one 4-sided dice and four 10-sided ones "number 04492".

Namesake, who had the very heavy hard copy of "PRT – Abridged Compendium of Known Parahumans in North America, January 2011 Edition, Volume 3", was already going up the third index (index by chronological registration).

"Got it, but can't really pronounce it," she said.

Rose, across her sister, nodded, immediately turning almost to the very beginning of the Volume 1 book on her own lap. She leafed some more and found it: "Here it is: the name's in Spanish, but translates to Stinger. He was a minor villain who helped on the very first Endbringer truce, survived, then did some purse-snatchings on his way South before disappearing in Texas. Blaster 3 with no other known powers, who could create these bee-sized missiles that would deliver a tiny amount of pain and irritation, similar to a bee sting. His caveats were that his bees were self-targeting and self-guided, ignored cover and armour and could apparently be shot hundreds at a time. Threat Assessment D."

Amelia closed Volume 2 and rubbed her chin for a moment.

"Unless I could touch him and knock him out real fast, I would turn tail and try to lure him into a park. Then I would go Cthulu on him." Meaning that she would either hide underground or into a tree, then would immobilize him with grass tentacles or grasping tree branches. "And I would hope real good that his bees are Manton-limited to living, so my armour would stop them."

"Then you should have started from there, and then planned the rest," Zoe said.

Amelia frowned and nodded slowly. Or more like she just nodded slowly, accepting the criticism, while keeping the same neutral frown that Zoe had almost never seen leave the young woman's face.

"Okay, who's next?" Zoe asked rhetorically, picking up her dices and preparing to toss them.

"For the next fight... Rose, you go solo..." (which early enough they all had agreed 'the twins are always together but only you decide') "...you provoke..." she rolled one 4-sided dice and four 10-sided ones "number 10489".

Namesake rapidly found the number and announced the name: "Cask".

Amelia cleared her throat.

"Don't bother searching: he's on the Healer's registry, so I know who he is. He is, of all things, a drink tinker, who can tune people up or heal them but only if they drink something like a half gallon of any given one of his concoctions. Still, he's always drinking his own drinks, so always assume he's a minor Brute, Mover and Thinker."

"Okay; that's easy," replied Rose. "We're a fairly high Mover and Thinker, so we should be able to stall him indefinitely. Knock away his drinks. Probably bear-bait him if he isn't too smart."

"Bear- bait? What's that?" asked Amelia.

"Something of a medieval bloodsport," replied Namesake. "You captured a bear and put it on a short tether. You then surround it and kept attacking its back legs with dogs, only to pull them back as soon as the bear turns."

"Nothing else?" asked Zoe, picking up the dices.

"For the next fight... Amelia, you lead a squad... you get to flank..." she rolled one 4-sided dice and four 10-sided ones "number 05731".

Namesake rapidly found the number and announced the name: "Crawler".

"We turn tail and run," Rose informed immediately.

"We run and we don't look back," echoed namesake.

"Actually..." Amelia said. "...I think I have a plan: I build up my armour as much as possible, then jump on Crawler's back and, while he tears the armour apart, I try to attack _him_ with biokinesis. If it works, I expel his brain from his body and there's no more Crawler; if it doesn't, I leg it."

Even Zoe had to nod at such a plan... even if it left her a little queasy.

She then moved to pick the dices again, but before she had launched them, she couldn't help but to let out a huge yawn. She thus folded her dungeon-master screen and put the dices into their jar.

"That was it for me, ladies, so I'll take my leave," she said, stretching her arms. "And you remember to take off all that black mascara before getting into bed."

Two girls let out a little chuckle at that.

She thus received thank yous, hugs and kisses and walked out of the most subdued sleepover she had ever hosted as a Mum: no daughter of hers talking about makeup or fashion or poetry or handsome young men; Annette's daughters weren't waxing poetry about cape powers or science fiction or commenting the news; and there were no giggles or cheer to be found at all. Of course, hosting a few snotfests immediately after Annette's death hadn't counted as sleepovers to her, but hearing her nieces and a guest do mental war games involving their own powers against real parahumans, after having applied Morticia Adams makeup on each others, was only like three levels of weird above her one and only Lustrum rally. "Try not to stay up to late," she said from the door.

"Night, Aunty," came her Namesake.

"Night, Aunty," came her niece Rose.

"Night, Missus Barnes," came Amelia Lavere, the lonely, almost clingy girl that hid somewhere inside the sour, tired, cynical little shit that had hid behind Panacea's image of tireless, infinite compassion.

And no daughter of hers said anything.

Once the door clicked, she checked Danny in the master room, snoring lightly, went downstairs to grab a beer, and finally went into her own bedroom.

* * *

_Author's Notes:_  
_I got the character Aguijón from "Recoil", by Ack1308. That character resonated something in me, considering that I went through a moment in my life in 2015-16 when I was seriously considering going wetback._  
_The other two I got by rolling dices on the Worm Wikia and on a US map._


	12. 3,4: Finding a new Normal

_Author's Note:_  
_Once again, no timestamps. Nowhere as ominous as the prior chapter, though._

* * *

**The Taylor Twins 3.4**

* * *

**Finding a new 'normal'  
**

* * *

**Hebert household, close to midnight**

Up in the second bedroom of the Hebert household, the two twins who lived there had just spent around a half hour doing what they had compromised to do when horny: to do their "self explorations" in the same room, simultaneously, ignoring each other.

Thing is, to do so would be quite a feat for them, considering that they completely shared on each others' senses...

Rose was reading X-rated cape fiction regarding Taffy and Putty, a well-known pair of twin hero capes in Denver, having a sexual rendezvous with Black Knight, a particularly gallant Tinker vigilante known for taking drug money and donating heavily to charities.

Zoe was browsing porn...

Jewish-looking white girls being "worshipped" by Latino guys...

Black-haired twin girls having a go at a single guy...

And then she found a website with photo manipulated photos... of two-headed girls being "worshipped" ...

Looking through Zoe's eyes, Rose then found one photo with a guy that bore more than a pacing resemblance to Carlos...

And looking through Rose's eyes, Zoe was reading how Taffy and Putty had simply forgotten about detaining Black Knight shortly after infiltrating his latest robot: them reforming their two bodies inside his tiny cabin had very effectively jammed them all together, and the very little that they could move was resulting in arousal... and rather than trying to restrain him, they were busy running their hands all over him... and now they had combined their bodies and would have tried to break their way out, but then felt his manhood through his shorts and decided they had different priorities…

* * *

After finishing their "self exploration", and after taking turns in their private bathroom, the two twins slipped into bed. It might have said something that, despite their custom to merge before going to bed, they had tacitly agreed to not merge tonight. In fact, while they were facing each other, they were carefully apart.

One of them turned off the lights, but their eyes didn't close.

Silence stretched. With Rose being able to see the digital alarm clock behind Zoe, both girls could keep count of the minutes.

Three minutes...

Five minutes...

Eight minutes...

Eleven minutes...

At the mark of the fourteenth minute, both girls stretched out and turned on their bedside lamps. They then scooted to the middle of the bed and hugged with arms and legs and necks.

"_We need to speak with Carlos" _they simultaneously muttered into each others' ears.

They held each other like that for a few more minutes. They then had a short conversation through looks, got out of bed, merged, and finally managed to fall asleep.

* * *

The following Monday, it was too bad that they couldn't find Carlos alone at school (Dennis was a really good clock-blocker, without the first 'L'), and they didn't dare to brave the rumours that both the Rig and PRT HQ were bugged to heavens' above.

It thus took them until Thursday before they were lucky enough to be scheduled to have a patrol with him. And then, they waited until they were on the furthermost point of their circuit before they dared to wave him down.

And once he was down with them, they radioed Console to say that they wanted to take ten minutes to buy a doughnut and some tea.

Indeed, they had stopped on top a doughnut shop, but Aegis then eyed them strangely when they didn't move to get off the roof. Delicately, they pulled him into the dark shadow behind the shop's sign and pushed him to lean on a support.

"Aegis…"

"Yes, Ladybug, how can I help you?"

"Well; I and I... I mean A-me and B-me... have been meaning to talk to you… We don't know how to really attack the subject, so we'll improvise a little here. Could you please remove your mask?"

As he unclasped it and pulled it off, Ladybug separated into their two selves, then they both removed their helmets and laid them down on the gravel.

Stepping forward into his personal space, the twins then each took one of his hands on their two pairs. "Now, Aegis..." "Carlos..." "We saw that the art gallery downtown has a new exhibit..." "and were wondering if you would ask us to go with you there..."

The boy gaped for a while, but eventually found the brainpower to nod at them.

Zoe and Rose, emboldened, then let go of his hands and, slipping under his arms, pressed their bodies against his.

While he did stiffen, he found the presence of mind to then manoeuvre his hands onto the small of their backs. They replied by letting their four hands explore.

His back was certainly firm...

His shoulders were solid like skin-covered rocks...

His chest wasn't any softer...

His six pack was yummy...

And a hand then found his cup, and couldn't cover it...

This last tidbit somehow made the girls blink, then realize what they were doing and jump away (incidentally dislodging a pair of hands that had been kneading their derrieres).

The girls looked at each other for a moment, but their linked thoughts helped them to figure out where the conversation had derailed: the date!

So they turned back at him, and stepping beside each other (carefully keeping out of his personal space), they spoke at him:

"So, Carlos... could you pick us up at our home... at 6 PM Saturday evening? ... So we could dine out... and see the gallery?"

"Y... yes, Taylor. I'd be delighted."

"Yay!" the girls squealed, then found themselves once again pressing their breastplates against his pectorals, but now without hands roaming, and with their lips placing chaste kisses on the corners of his mouth.

He replied by gently squeezing them in his arms and kissing their cheeks. They then all shared a little chuckle, separated, and finished their patrol.

* * *

Later that night, the twins got back home. There, they found their Dad finishing a pot of Mac & Cheese. Still glowing in happiness, the girls jumped into his arms and greeted him quite effusively.

Of course, their Dad wasn't a completely oblivious male, so he did notice they were quite giddy: "So, what's the happy occasion, Tay-Tay?"

"_Carlos asked us out!"_ they squealed in chorus.

"Well, that's certainly nice of the boy!" he said, letting go of one of them to turn off the stove. "You can tell me everything over supper." He then gave them each a kiss on the forehead, gave them a last squeeze and they let go, to then serve and warm three glasses of milk while they set the table.

They gave him a slightly edited version of events, though: they didn't want to admit that it had been them who had asked the boy out.

About a half hour after supper, though, their Dad came to their room. They felt slightly intimidated by his knowing grin, especially once he leaned on their door frame and crossed his arms.

"Hey girls, I just got off the phone. Carlos' mom called, and she had a story to tell..."

They stood like that for a few moments, Zoe and Rose rooted to the spot. Thankfully, their Dad cut through the awkwardness by lifting a fist and gently bonking their two heads.

"And that was for you two telling the boy to pick you up after you asked him out," he said, his voice sounding stern but his expression shining with badly repressed amusement. "If you asked him out, then you pick him up! And here!" he said, finishing by pulling a hundred-dollar bill off his shirt pocket and extending it forward. "This should be enough for the gallery and dinner for three in a not-so-expensive restaurant. And to pass my truck through a car wash."

He then extended a finger and poked their noses. "Yes, you can have my truck at five on Saturday. And you too stay up until I run a quick errand."

He then closed their door. A minute later, they heard the truck start outside.

Some twenty minutes later, he was back, knocking on their door. Time which they would have just sat in awkward silence if Amy hadn't phoned them and extracted the entire, embarrassing story out f them, to then hang up when they told her they Dad was arriving. And at his first knock they opened, looked at what he had... and wished they hadn't opened: on one hand, he had a handful of packets of condoms, while on the other, he had a large banana.

"And now, young ladies, I won't let you go and sweep that sweet and innocent boy off his feet unless I know for a fact that you two know how to put on a condom."

Which, as it turned out, the girls thought they did, except that their dad had to teach them that it has an inside and an outside...

* * *

Friday afternoon, the twins went shopping downtown, accompanied by their aunty and Amy. They had wanted to power-dress for their date tomorrow, but their aunty completely derailed such thoughts: that being asked out by them should have already been completely intimidating for the poor boy, and how they now needed to try for delicate and feminine. Thus the twins, rather than buy the denim ensembles or pencil skirts and librarian blouses they had thought about, ended up buying these airy white dresses, one pale pink and one pale blue sweaters, and these white flats... and insisted that Amy buys a set as well (with a pale green sweater), considering that, while they felt rather uncomfortable wearing white, Amy did make it look good.

* * *

Aunty saw them out the door, waving around a wine goblet and positively cackling. She couldn't stop telling them that Annette would too be cackling, calling every girl she knew had left Lustrum's movement, and gloating that her daughters' first date was by them asking the boy out.

* * *

Carlos' mom seemed equally amused: when they came and knocked at their door at six sharp, the lady gave them a once-over, greeted them with hugs, kisses and giggles, and guided them to the living room, were the coffee table was set with tea, scones, and a double-barrelled shotgun. The girls eyed it bemusedly, while the lady drank up their expressions with great amusement.

"I'm sorry for the shotgun, girls, but my father had his out when my first boyfriend came knocking, and I despaired that I wouldn't ever have that chance with me only having Carlos. But today I rejoice, with two very bold girls deciding they wanted to put him on the backfoot!" she said, completely giddy. "Now, girls, with all of us being females, I hope we can all be rational: are you planning on making me a grandmother before I'm forty?"

The twins rapidly shock their heads.

"Good!" the lady said. "Now please drink your tea while I go and get my son."

And the lady picked up the gun and went up the stairs, leaving the girls in awkward silence.

_'One day, we will look back ...' '...and laugh our heads off at the memory of this day.' 'But that day isn't today.'_

The twins shared a stiff nod at that last thought.

Thankfully, they weren't kept waiting for long, with the lady coming back with Carlos quickly enough.

He wasn't precisely breathtaking (his normal form-fitting uniform having left them somewhat jaded), but he really did look quite sharp with his deep purple shirt, grey pants and black shoes. The white necktie seemed like a sharp contrast, but it did give them all a trio look.

Soon enough, the lady had them all photographed, then ushered them out and shut the door behind them.

Zoe, who had been carrying their single purse, handed Carlos the truck's keys; Carlos then walked to the truck and opened the passenger's side door for them and helped them in.

In the few seconds afforded to them as he walked around the truck, as per a coin toss an hour ago, Zoe jumped into Rose, then they shrugged off her sweater (red) and tucked it out of sight. They then opened the sun shade and pretended to inspect their makeup as he slipped in, and only once he had entered and closed the door, they turned at him and gave him a beatific smile.

"So, can you tell who I am, Carlos dearest?" They said, making him freeze like a deer caught on headlights. They held him like that for some long seconds before they let out a giggle and they then scooted up the bench seat and gave him a sideways hug and leaned their head on his shoulders.

It took him a moment, but he then began to relax and slipped his own arm behind them. Encouraged, the girls looked up at him and continued speaking, now in a subdued tone: "Sorry about that, Carlos."

"No... Taylor," the boy said, looking mollified. "It's kind of terrible that I can't tell you two apart. I promise I'll pay attention until I can."

"That's very sweet from you, Carlos, but honestly don't bother... and don't doubt to call either of us 'Taylor' when in doubt." They said, shaking their head slightly and giving him a little squeeze. They then incorporated and made eye contact with him. "There's actually a tertiary aspect of our twins' power that our Dad discovered a few weeks ago: we are becoming literally identical, down to the last pimple and the last stretch mark. Now, see this?" They said, turning on the dome light, then pulling their dress up to their upper thigh and showing him a pure white spot on their left thigh.

"Up until last month, Zoe had a crater here, from a stray bullet four years ago. Nowadays, between the crater in Zoe's leg and the unblemished skin in Rose's, we both averaged to this discoloured spot."

They insinuated themselves back onto his shoulder. He received them with both arms, and then leaned his head on top of theirs.

"And it gets better: remember when we lost a day to Master/Stranger detainment last week?"

"Let me guess," he mumbled into their scalp. "Your biometrics are changing."

"Yup," they said, nodding. "Armsmaster had to place an exception to accept a 95% match, which is as close as we were when inducted. And our current match is almost a solid one hundred in fingerprints and 98% in the iris scan."

"Literally... identical..." Carlos seemed to chew the words, as he did seem to understand that it wasn't something good. They felt like kissing him just for him _understanding_.

They remained like that for a long moment, breathing his perfume as he breathed their shampoo, until the twins gave him a squeeze, incorporated and scooted over to get their seat belt on. Carlos put on his, shared a smile with them, and started the car.

* * *

The exhibition at the Folsberg Gallery was a bust, as far as their artistic side was concerned: their Mum had, after all, taught them the difference between Impressionism, Surrealism, and the practice of passing laziness and clown vomit as either of those. But they were quite entertained by teaching Carlos, who was apparently quite perplexed, and were later proud that he could then perform a passable critique of a couple of the last sculptures: one being a Minimalist one named "the cowboy" that actually showed the effort of the artist to depict a mounted horseman tossing a rope at a bull with the minimal of elements possible; and an a lazy one that was titled "the ruins" that was just a jumble of scrap metal welded together around pieces of rubble.

* * *

They didn't have a load of money left, so they guided Carlos to a small sandwich bar their Dad had told them had, in fact, been a favourite place of their Mom.

While Carlos ordered relatively lightly, they ordered "The Half Pounder", a sandwich they Dad had fond memories of, consisting on a total half pound of every cold cut on the bar, plus a ton of greens.

At his expression they giggled, then commented at him rather airily:

"Well, aren't we rather unfortunate that you are only dating one girl?"

He caught on immediately, of course, and chuckled. And as they cut their sandwich in half, he did the same.

* * *

Once they had finished the first half and stood up to go to the bathroom and switch, he also shot up and took their hand, then opened his mouth, but then eyed the crowded restaurant and shut his mouth.

Understanding what was up, they pushed him back down and sat by his side rather than across the table. He leaned closer.

"_So, are you Taylor Zoe, or Taylor Rose?"_ he muttered.

"_I'm Taylor, you silly!"_ They replied, impulsively caressing his cheek. _"__You have had both of us the whole time. There's no twin waiting impatiently in the bathroom. But we do have two stomachs, one of which is currently full, and another that currently begs attention."_

They thus caressed his cheek again, incorporated and left him, feeling his eyes on their back and swaying their hips _for real_ for the first time in their lives.

A minute later, they returned to their table and daintily ate the other half.

* * *

Ten minutes later, they were paying their food and leaving. They would have loved to enjoy the art of conversation over tea and desserts, but with them all being Wards, they couldn't risk a frank discussion in public. They thus went through a doughnut shop's drive-thru and got tea and donuts, and enjoyed a good hour talking in the shop's parking lot.

T&T found him delightful: he wasn't up to their level in classical education, but he was willing to learn. And, under his Brute body, they found him to be a fan of classic science fiction.

* * *

As all good things, this evening eventually had to end.

Reversing what they had done at the start of their date, they separated in the time he took to walk around the truck, and two girls walked him up to his front step.

The two of them then stole his arms and guided them around their own waists, and then Zoe used her free hand to pull his head her way and kiss him.

It was a close-mouthed kiss, but they both considered it to be very nice.

Rose then pulled his chin to face her and plunged in.

He incidentally had his mouth open, so it turned out to be a better kiss than the prior one.

Zoe's eyes caught the arch of saliva between Rose and Carlos. Both twins found the sight very sexy and both plunged in.

"**Eh - Erm..."**

The three teens sprung apart. Carlos' Mom had been waiting in the shadow of a tree. She had her arms crossed, and her shotgun on her back, but her expression was an amused one.

"Well," said the lady, uncrossing her arms to examine her son. "No brassieres in anybody's pockets, but that could have changed a minute later."

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, their Aunty and Dad received them home. Dad was content to tease them a little, but Aunty did follow them upstairs and kept them blushing and giggling. Thinking about the fact that they were sharing a very nice boy, and not thinking about the fact that they had to share...

* * *

The next morning, Amy came home uninvited. She then squeezed the twins for every juicy detail!

* * *

And on Monday, they found a very different Carlos at school: one who was waiting for them at the front gates, then saw them and made a bee line for them, looking decisive.

Their aunty had prepared them, telling them that him mom had likely teased him all Sunday, and he would likely wish to assert a little dominance, and their options would likely be to let him, or to power-play with him.

They chose both: Rose, who was wearing a very conservative housedress, stepped in front of her sister, then let Carlos take her into his arms...

"_Morning, gorgeous_," he whispered.

...And press his lips on hers.

His snog was... intense. Rose was a noodle in his arms. Zoe had to fight to not fall to the floor in a puddle. Her knees would have likely given way if Amy hadn't been a step behind her.

But she held. And once Carlos released Rose, (and Amy pinched her), Zoe moved forward, grabbed his head...

"_Morning, handsome,_" she whispered.

...And gave him some sugar back!

Once he was properly dazed, the twins insinuated themselves under his arms, then pulled him into the school among cheers and catcalls!

* * *

_Author's Note:_

_1.- Why didn't they start thinking of themselves in singular?_  
_Mental compartmentalization: they aren't in uniform, ergo, they aren't one._  
_Or do they become a crazy girl who thinks of herself in singular and plural as the situation changes?_

_2.- Don't remember if Taylor's birthday was ever mentioned in Worm. Nonetheless, going by averages, she would be 16 by the time the Undersiders hit the fundraiser._

_3.- A slightly longer version of this chapter will be available elsewhere in the net in a couple days._

_4.- There exists a 3.5, but it is really much more of an overdramatic prelude to 4.1 than a real part of Arc 3._


	13. 4,1 as seen by Dryad

**.**

* * *

**The Taylor Twins 4.1**

* * *

**... as seen by Dryad**

* * *

_**Author's Notes:**_

_If you are finding the story hard to follow, you may have skipped chapter 3.C. According to the traffic graph, half of you did. _

_Sorry for the delay. Merry Xmas, Happy new year, and I hope you aren't working in a carnival show. I can happily announce that I'm producing for the newly elected Golden (...years...) Queen for the Cancun Carnival 2020. Expect more delays until the Carnival has actually happened. I'm just glad she's the director and that I'm not the choreographer. _**_Please visit Cancun and come cheer these coming 22 to 25 of February._**

_This "chapter" marks a shift in this story: rather than truly publish the chapter, I'll just keep replaying the same event, over and over again, from the point of view of different characters. I'll keep doing so until there's a bare minimum of information to form a complete picture, although I won't replay a given scene from two characters unless somebody else saw something completely different._

* * *

**Sunday May 15, 2011; 0853hrs**

Amelia, just like most of the rest of the Wards, were stalking the entrance like hawks.

They had already received confirmation that their target had left the atrium and was on her way up.

And, finally...

"Surprise!"

And Missy squealed, and began being hugged by everybody on sight!

* * *

**0935hrs**

"Guys, guys, we'll be back in a jiffy," Rose said, opening the door to the twins' private room.

"Yeah; we just need to do Missy's makeup," insisted Zoe, leading Missy in.

"Back in ten minutes; fifteen at most," Amelia said, as she closed the door.

Inside, they led Missy to the twins' vanity, where she got a brush and stepped behind Missy while the twins got the actual makeup and began doing her.

"Although, Missy," Amelia said over Missy's shoulder. "What I really wanted was to offer you my birthday present: I can take a look at your genetics, and I can then make whatever small changes you want." Amelia started brushing her, putting her left hand on Missy's left shoulder. "And there's no time limit on this, so you can tell me once you think about it."

"Actually, I already know," Missy replied immediately, putting her two hands on Amelia's. "My mom is dainty and petite, and I look exactly like her when she was my age. Could you make sure I don't grow up to be Cutesy, Magical Girl Vista?"

"You sure of this, Missy?"

"I watch cape fanart, Dryad! While everybody else in the team has heroic or edgy portraits; I get unicorns, rainbows and freaking princess dresses!" 'Seeing' Missy's muscles, Amelia saw that she really was trying to crush her left hand in hers. Distressingly, Missy really wasn't strong enough to make it hurt.

She just sighed.

"Alright: Amazon Vista coming up," he said, handing the brush to Zoe, placing her two hands around Missy's neck and concentrating.

Indeed, Missy's genes pointed at her being less than five feet and being always thin. Elfin, really.

Amelia first took a look at Missy's skeleton, and tweaked it so she would grow well into six feet. Then, remembering her 'remodelling' of Rune, she created two growths of Leydig cells under Missy's skin, right under her collarbones were they could be easily extirpated if needed. She took a general look at Missy's biology and did the opposite of what her general remodelling did to Rune: Missy's body, even so flooded with testosterone as to grow muscle just by looking at exercise equipment, would always be deliciously womanly: natural and firm D cups, narrow waist, huge derriere, naturally bald legs, arms and face, a luscious contralto voice, and even a skin pretty much immune to pimples.

"Now, Missy, here," she said, guiding Missy's hands toward the growths.

"Can you feel these growths I just put under your skin?"

"Yeah..." Missy replied, expectant (and a little apprehensive).

"These are hormonal glands. You'll need to exercise, but these little bitches will make sure you'll pick up muscle really easily. And as to being short: I just made sure that your next growth spurt is going to be downright spectacular."

Missy jumped at her, hugging her tightly. She gladly returned the hug.

"And Missy; would you want a tan, too?"

"Hell yeah!"

* * *

**1020hrs**

"Happy Birthday, dear Missy; Happy Birthday to you!"

Missy blew her candles, and everybody began clapping and clamouring for the current midget.

Then, it all went to hell.

"SITUATION BLACK. ALL UNITS TO FULL ALERTNESS. SITUATION BLACK. THIS IS NOT A DRILL." Went the PA system.

Amelia hadn't quite memorized the codebook yet, but it was easy enough to remember that the colour codes were ordered from "peaceful" to "active high level emergency".

And then, from the building's roof, came the Endbringer siren.

"Costumes on and wait here!" barked Aegis, finally reacting. "Endbringer means anything goes, so war armours and untested devices are all okay!"

As expected, everybody ran toward their rooms. Amelia, in hers, ripped off her clothes, docked her cellphone onto her week-old custom helmet, then put on her green leotard and helmet and jumped into her bioarmour and ran... stopped. She then took a look at her room and began taking and absorbing absolutely every single thing that she could absorb, including the more than one hundred genetic samples she had, her two spare armours and the hundred pounds of ultra-preserved wet protein she had in her closet.

In total, she took less than two minutes to be in and out.

Next one out was Vista. Criticize the childishness of her costume all you want, but it was very practical, being just shoes, leggings, a dress, her half-helmet and armour. Vista seemed to have replaced her shoes with high boots, was wearing biker shorts, and was taking some scissors against her skirt.

Looking outside, Dryad saw that the morning's foul weather had gone into something more resembling of that tropical storm she had seen that time when New Wave had taken a Florida vacation.

Looking between Missy and the windows, she suddenly had an idea:

"Vista, I just had an idea that may save your life," she said, advancing on Vista, releasing her hands out of her gauntlets and pressing them against Vista's exposed neck.

She rapidly dissolved the inside of Vista's nasal cavity and sinuses, then turned the living mass into octopus-like gills (still made of human cells, so they wouldn't be rejected even if she wasn't available to undo the change), connected them backwards with the girl's carotid arteries and jugular veins, and created a miniature cartoid structure on each side. Then a set of breathing muscles and a membrane to make sure the water flowed through when submerged and to collapse the gills and keep them moist when not submerged, and finally, a small sensory organ and a nervous bulb that would make the breathing muscles work and would release noradrenaline and other calming hormones as soon as the nose was full of water.

Her work done, she pulled Vista into an _almost_ crushing hug, but released her quickly and explained the changes:

"Okay, here's the deal: rather than a nose, you now have gills. Don't get excited, though, because they are barely enough to keep your brain alive."

Vista nodded slowly, understanding.

Next came out Aegis. His costume seemed to be exactly the same, except that he had a black sash and was carrying a sledgehammer across his back.

"Would you want some survival gills, Aegis?" she asked.

"Thanks for offering, Dryad, but my power will take care if needed."

"I will have some, if you please," came Clockblocker, who was a step behind Aegis. He hadn't modified his costume either, but was carrying a crossbow with a fishing line reeling mechanism screwed in.

"Then come here and bare me some skin. And Vista, come here so I can copy my own work with you."

Dryad finished his survival gills in less than a minute.

After him, she did the twins, simultaneously. And took a few seconds to give them the same testosterone glands she had given Missy. She would give them the full treatment, later. Before letting them go, she tapped the sites, gestured at Vista and gave them a significant look. They nodded back, understanding.

She then did Gallant and Kid Win at once. She noted the later had donned a full helmet and was riding a long, techy tube like it was a witch's broom.

She also noted it wasn't any harder to do them both at once. After all, she wasn't doing anything hard, but just turning existing healthy structures into something else. She guessed she would take some pause if she found somebody with nasal cancer, but this was otherwise very pedestrian.

"Excuse me?" gently asked Miss Militia (whose characteristic bandana had given way to a PRT helmet with a US flag paintjob), as soon as she looked up again.

"Survival gills: you give up your sense of smell in exchange for becoming resistant to drowning. Want some?"

"Yes, I would," Miss Militia said, baring her neck.

Dryad didn't immediately go to her, though: she gestured at the three PRT troopers that had entered with Miss Militia and yelled: "Survival gills! Come here and give me some skin contact near your faces!"

She also grew her gauntlets around her hands, to then grow two fingers from each hand like branches and point them at one cape and three normals. They all got the hint, grabbed one and placed it on their skin.

In less than thirty seconds, she had given them all some gills.

Once she lowered her hands, Miss Militia addressed the Wards as a whole.

"Now, people; this is it. Who doesn't want to fight: raise your hand so we can get you to the building's shelter."

Nobody raised their hand. Indeed, Vista made a show of crossing her hands and scowling up at their superior.

"Next: strategies for Endbringer battle. You all know we won't allow Wards into direct combat, right?"

Everybody nodded.

"With that understood, I want to hear your plans. In order of age, you go first, Aegis."

"Search and rescue for downed capes, Ma'am," he said, fingering the hammerhead hanging by his waist.

He then nodded at Clockblocker.

"With the crossbow and the fishing line, I can freeze stuff at a distance. I've practised freezing stuff at a distance through the fishing line, so I know it will work. Thing is, I'll need to go down there to the gathering and see who can I pair up with, because I can't freeze the sea."

"I can help you with that," interjected Kid Win, patting his contraption. "My alternator cannon here can shoot a cold beam, and you then shoot your arrow and freeze the ice shelf in place."

"That's a valid strategy," injected Miss Militia, "but better think to have the arrow inside the water before Kid Win freezes it. You don't want to risk it glancing off."

"Yes, ma'am," said both guys.

"So, you two are paired up?"

Clockblocker eyed Kid Win, who nodded curtly.

"Now we are, ma'am," replied Clockblocker.

"Good. Once you get your arm bands, you two are to get to a high window in this building and prepare to aid on the barrier duties until Leviathan makes landfall. You are then to get a Mover to deliver you to defend a hospital or something."

"I got the Mover part covered, ma'am," Kid Win added, hopping off his cannon to show that he was sitting on a bicycle saddle. "My cannon either shoots or flies, but its antigrav system is just a beefing up from my hoverboard."

"Don't go taking wild risks, boys," Miss Militia said their way. "Okay, who's next? Gallant?"

"I can find people by their emotions, and the armour gives me a Brute rating," he replied. "I'll be doing search and rescue too."

"Stay safe, Gallant; remember you don't have a Mover rating like Aegis." she replied. "Who's next, now? Ladybug?"

"I'll need Ladybug, ma'am," Dryad interjected. "As expected, I'll be doing healing duties, but my newfound abilities..." She raised one of her gauntlets and waved its very inhuman fingers. "...mean that I can do mass healings, and for that I'll need gophers that I can trust blind. That, and a small pool and all the fresh biomass you guys can get me."

"Okay by you, Ladybug?"

The twins hesitated a moment before nodding.

Inwardly, Dryad sighed in relief: she knew that, if she hadn't intervened, Zoe and Rose would have gone for Search & Rescue despite the fact their powers would be useless in a Leviathan engagement.

"And Vista?"

"I'll go with the standard plan drawn for me: I'll bridge between Medical and the advance rescue centres."

"You then stick with Dryad and Ladybug for now, help deliver them to Medical, and then start working on your bridges from there," replied Miss Militia. "Anybody has anything to add?"

Curt head shakes all around.

"Okay, everybody down to the lobby, then you get your armbands, **don't** listen to Legend's speech and then you all get to your positions. And for goodness sake..." she gathered Vista into her arms and hugged her. "...try to stay alive, everybody!"

She then released Vista, then turned around, led them out of their common room and took the stairs, up. Aegis pointed at the elevator.

"You ladies take the elevator," he said. "We aren't in that much of a hurry." He then led the boys (and two of the troopers) down the stairs.

The girls and their one trooper thus walked up to the elevator and called it.

"Are you going to be with us?" Dryad asked to the trooper, as the elevator chimed and they stepped in.

"Yes, ma'am," he informed. "Panacea was the best healer, and you seem to be improving from there."

"Okay; welcome to being my gopher, then," she replied. "How may I call you?"

"Corporal Ignace Rodriguez, ma'am."

"Well, Corporal, I wasn't kidding back there: I need all the wet biomass I can get: fruits and vegetables, whole animals, milk, eggs, whatever." She said, enumerating with her fingers. "Have the PRT raid the abattoir, a supermarket, a produce seller or something, and toss it all into a small, above-ground pool. I can make the pool out of wood, too, but I would then need to harvest several big trees and waste valuable time. And if possible pass my biomass through a woodchipper so I can work it faster into people."

"Understood. Radioing your instructions, ma'am." He then brought a hand up to the side of his helmet and began muttering. She rounded on the girls.

"Now, Vista, Ladybug: I'm going to be handing out survival gills, ten people at a time. I want you all to make people line up and show some skin, then you Vista supervise the ten-person cutoff and you Ladybug align them into a half circle in front of me so I can do them."

"Roger," replied Vista, locating herself front and centre to the elevator's still closed door. The twins nodded at her and flanked Vista.

The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and Vista and the twins were off, shouting and rounding up the fifty-or-so capes already present. It had only been ten minutes or so since the alarm!

And then, on a cordoned area on the far side, she then saw Strider appear with a dozen more capes, to then disappear alone, and these capes to be rapidly ushered away from the spot by some PRT troopers acting as gophers. Idly, she noted that PRT office workers were gluing banners to the walls: "Shield-makers", "Heavy-duty Melee", "Regular Melee", and some others that weren't up yet.

But then, her three girls had her first half-circle of subjects.

"If you want your survival gills, I need skin contact preferably near your faces!" she yelled at them, raising her hands to her sides and growing her ten fingers like tentacles at them. "Take a finger and keep it pressed against your skin!"

Once she felt all ten bodies, she went to work. And she also made a point to include a sensation of heat so they knew where she had worked.

Within thirty seconds, they were done.

"Next ten!" she yelled!

Rinse and repeat. Then grew two more fingers.

"Send me twelve, Vista!"

Rinse and repeat.

"Send me fourteen, Vista!"

This group included the last of New Wave. Her family. She had to make every effort to act like she didn't know them, rather than pull all of them close and not let go.

They did surreptitiously caress her woody fingers.

She did make them all heart-shaped hematomas on the back of their hands.

"Send me sixteen, Vista!"

As she received her next group, she eyed her family depart. She idly noted that the guy inside the nine-feet, seemingly-cobbled-together armour happened to be her boss, Armsmaster.

"Eighteen more, Vista!"

She noticed her family hugging each others and separating to be with their respective groups.

"Twenty, Vista! And I think that's my limit!"

She noted this group included Legend, but it was otherwise rinse and repeat.

Again and again...

* * *

Several minutes later, Corporal Rodriguez slapped her with an armband and insisted that she had to go. And as soon as she did, Strider came and took her and hers.

Reaching the medical centre, which had been improvised in the always-half-empty Medhall hospice, Vista was suffled elsewhere, then she was immediately shown to a large tent just outside the front door, where a half dozen PRT personnel were hastily assembling an above-ground pool made of canvas and tubes. And while it was already there, nobody was assembling her wood chipper.

"Everybody stop right now!" she shouted. Or tried to, as the din of the heavy rain didn't allow the sound to carry.

"I'll be back in a minute! You assemble the people!" she shouted at Ladybug and her Corporal from up close, who gave her thumbs up and moved forward. She stepped back outside the tent, sighted several mature trees on the opposite sidewalk and started for them.

Indeed, in under a minute she had basically eaten six very large conifers, roots included, and her armour had rather turned into a very elongated eight-legged wooden elephant with her body sticking in front rather than a head. She used her own arms to open the tent flaps, then crawled in and started sending her wood forward, like a wave, covering the floor, then growing the supports for the fabric pool. Once it was properly erected, she gestured for them to huddle closer and opened her mouth:

"I can give you survival gills!" she shouted. "But I need you to show me some skin!"

Rodriguez and the Ladybugs were a godsent: They bared some skin and stepped forward. Dryad immediately grew a gauntlet, then grew her long branchy fingers and made the motions of giving them.

"Next!", Dryad shouted. Rodriguez and her teammates stepped away, and three of the PRT troopers took their places.

She did them efficiently enough. And, of course, made extra sure that the recipients felt what she had done.

"Next!"

Rinse and repeat with the other three.

She then occupied herself for a minute making a wooden dome under the tarp, and filling the space between with a couple inches of cotton as sound insulation. And finally populated the surfaces with luciferin organ circles and activated them: kind of dim, but better than the dark she had created.

"Finally," she sighed into the relative silence. "Now, who were on wood chipper duty?"

Four raised their hands.

"Then go and finish it, then start tossing food into the pool! And where's the food?"

"We got paddywagons raiding supermarkets, ma'am," one of the other two said. "We've got one behind the tarp." He said, pointing at a back entrance that Dryad hadn't noticed until now.

"Then go!"

They went.

"Rodriguez: find me a private channel, just for you, Ladybug and me. Notify me immediately once we're needed. And keep my armband: it isn't like I'm going anywhere."

"Aye-aye, ma'am!"

"And Ladybug, you're with me! I'm giving away gills until this all starts."

She gave herself a moment to look at her healing pool, then raised a couple of ramps out of the floor and up to the pool, and raised a couple signs reading "IN" and "OUT" respectively out of luciferin organ circuits.

She turned, and using the wood still left outside (about one tree's worth), she made a roofed walkway (wide enough for two gurneys at a time) between her tarp and the hospital's overhang.

Down to her normal armour, she stepped into the hospital. Unfortunately, almost as soon as she stepped in, Strider appeared, carrying the first load of downed combatants.

"Send me the worst!" she yelled at the triage doctors. "And keep me busy!" she added, before turning and running back to her post, followed by the twins.

"Ma'am, I got us frequency Whisky- Foxtrot!" informed her Rodriguez.

"Good," she said, immediately using her HUD to switch the frequency, then climbing into the pool. "Now, Rodriguez, Ladybug: I'm covering my head in cork. I'll concentrate on healing people, and do not want to be distracted from that. If anything requires my attention, you're my ears."

"Roger, ma'am," said Rodriguez.

"Roger, Dryad," said the twins in unison.

"Okay, final orders: Ladybug, climb in with me and feed me the people. Rodriguez: you do traffic control outside the pool. In, one side; out, the other." She then helped the twins to climb in. Sadly, the pool had barely an inch and was mostly smashed eggs and milk, but it would do.

In less than a minute, she was receiving her first patient: a guy with a Russian flag patch and a mostly collapsed thorax. She corrected all his twenty-seven fractures, gave him nasal gills, shot him up with endorphins and handed him over to the Ladybug to her right.

Looking up momentarily, she noticed the orderlies were making a line on the "IN" ramp.

"Tell them to just toss people in and be ready to fish them from the other side." She said through the radio. "If they are all inside the pool, I can sense my patients and pace myself.

She then received some old lady that was missing two limbs and had been gored and had lost both kidneys and most of her intestine. As this one wouldn't be going back to the fight, she just sealed up her stumps, connected back the remains of her guts and made her a child's kidney. Now stable, she passed her over and received the next one.

She soon entered a trance.

* * *

At some point, she was shaken out of her trance, then told with great urgency that they had to evacuate the site.

"Everybody: I'm taking it all with me," she said quite calmly to the PRT guys, the hospital orderlies and the Ladybugs, who where hurriedly fishing capes out of the pool. She then stepped outside the pool. "Everybody step inside the pool, stay calm and don't panic," she stated, then connected with the living wood under her feet and willed the dome to shrink. Simultaneously, she was reabsorbing the walkway, and forming legs under it all.

She then thought about it, reached in and fished one of the Ladybugs out. She then hugged her to her bosom.

"You tell them what's going on outside. We don't need them to panic."

The Ladybug nodded, and Dryad opened her armour around Ladybug, then manipulated it so Ladybug's head stuck out of her chest.

When the dome reached her, she willed herself to be first outside, then at the head of her current fifteen feet round, ten legged tortoise, then spent a mere moment to shred her marque and began moving with the flow of people.

"Healing pool coming through!" She shouted a total of three times, rapidly gaining an escort of PRT personnel who then began doing the shouting for her.

The people where going through a distortion; like a tunnel in mid air, that from the side looked like it was shooting them in a ballistic arc to somewhere lost in the rain.

Once she got close, she saw that it was a bridge held open by Vista from the other side. They nodded at each other as she passed, but otherwise Vista was too busy keeping the bridge open and stable, and Dryad was too busy walking on ten tentacle-like legs.

The bridge left her in the middle of the trainyards. A third of the city in a single leap? You rock, Vista!

Although, she was told to hold: that they would be moving again shortly.

* * *

Indeed, five minutes later, they were jumping again, to the abandoned YMCA just north of Archer's Bridge.

She was lead to an overgrown garden, where she quickly deployed the dome again and got back to work.

* * *

At some point somebody came with still living pigs. She asked to pet them, which accomplished that she gently put them down by severing their brainstems. They were then fed through the woodchipper.

* * *

At some point, she ran out of work, came out of her trance and asked why weren't they tossing her more patients.

She was told the fight was over. Long over. That any patient in any risk of dying had already passed through her pool.

She asked if she could then begin properly repairing the many patients that she had just patched up.

They told her she could once she had slept. That she had been going strong a solid twelve hours.

"Okay," she simply replied, then closed her eyes.

* * *

_As I said at the beginning of the chapter, i__f you are finding the story hard to follow, you may have skipped chapter 3.C. According to the traffic graph, half of my readers skipped that chapter. _

_Take care._


	14. 4,1 as seen by a trucker

**The Taylor Twins 4.1**

* * *

**... as seen by a trucker.**

* * *

The storm was fairly solid, making it impossible to see as far as downtown, but George Gutierrez could still make out the enormous wall of water that had come from sea-side, rather than bay-side, and was crawling deceptively slow uphill through Captain's Hill, then inland through ritzy South Brockton.

He idly wondered how fast it was really going, and knew he was good enough at math to be able to calculate it by seeing landmarks be engulfed. It just so happened that he was much more worried about drinking beer on top of his truck's cab, getting soaked to the bone, watching Leviathan destroy his city.

"Is it swirling?" half-shouted Highway Patrolman Jacques O'Brien beside him, half covering his eyes against the rain.

George had previously noticed that the mass was apparently spinning. He knew the word 'swirl' meant 'move in a spiral', but he didn't care to correct Officer O'Brien. He rather took another pull from his beer.

"It is," he shouted back. "And I think it is picking up speed."

And indeed it was: in the last minute it had decidedly taken a discus shape, twenty feet tall and easily three hundred yards across, and now that the centre had dipping below the walls, it looked like a stadium had decided to take a stroll.

"See that brown house over there? That one about to be levelled?" the officer shouted, pointing just ahead of the wall of water. George didn't see a thing, but he shouted "yeah" all the same.

"My wife grew up there," the officer shouted. "Her folks were real assholes: they disowned her for marrying blue collar."

George guessed the officer was using 'blue collar' as a slang meaning 'not white', as the officer clearly had some very strong African ancestry, but George didn't ask for clarification.

They settled into a silence, watching how the capes had finally reacted and had begun blasting at the discus. Some seemed to be blasting at random, others (high flyers) seemed to be following a spot, but most where waiting for that spot to come around and have an opportunity at a synchronized shot.

_'Let's see: the discus is about three hundred yards round, and it's spinning at a period a little under three seconds_'. Pi times diameter over time... He assumed some rounding error, did the math in his head and whistled.

"What's that?" asked Collin.

"It looks slow because it's huge, but the discus's spinning a little under Mach speed!" he shouted back.

"Excuse me!" Somebody shouted from behind them.

Turning around, they found a woman crouching behind them. A woman on a checkered catsuit and a featureless mirrored mask. Clearly a cape.

"The fight is that way!" George informed, helpfully pointing at the discus.

"I'm not here for that!" she shouted back. "I'm looking for Mover of Goods, former member of the Marché!"

That was a name he hadn't heard in years. Not even at their annual barbecue for "the good half" that got out after Marquis was captured and Skidmark killed Gold Washer and turned the gang into everything Marquis didn't want it to be.

Glancing at the cop sitting by him, he tried to play coy.

A moment later, he glanced at the toroid of doom, sighed, turned back to the cape lady and admitted it: "That would be me," he shouted, trying not to think about the fact that he was literally confessing in front of a cop.

"Would you do a mission for Dryad, Marquis' daughter?"

"Gladly," he said with barely a moment's hesitation: all of the good half had been watching Panacea from afar all these years, ready to close ranks around her if she ever needed a thing. Speculation was rampant among them that Dryad had to be Panacea stretching her muscles, and it was great to have confirmation. He stood up, chucked his half-full bottle of beer well away from the road, then squared himself and saluted the lady.

"Where to, ma'am?"

"A field hospital will be set up at the abandoned YMCA north of Archer's bridge!" she shouted, handing him a domino mask and one of those Endbringer bracelets he had seen on the papers. "Dryad heals by using biomass! And the bridge will be overrun due to flash flood in precisely twenty-one minutes! Deliver your pigs to the YMCA before it does!"

He thought about it for a moment: under normal weather it was perfectly doable, but it was a tall order under these torrential rains.

Nevertheless... "Roger, ma'am!" he said, immediately beginning to plan his route: he would take the perimeter highway, of course...

"And Officer O'Brien: you are to follow him to the bridge and close it from this side!"

"Roger, ma'am!"

"Remember that many lives are at stake!" she said, before making a luminous portal appear in mid air, jumping through and disappearing from their lives.

George and Officer O'Brien thus nodded at each other, tossed their empties onto the embankment, and climbed down.

* * *

As always, he turned his key. His engine roared to life.

As he often did before going to sleep inside his sleeper, he then turned on his fuel cell. The computer governing the fuel cell immediately protested being turned on while the main engine was running, but that would be taken care off soon enough.

As seldom, he then pulled out the ashtray, twisted it clockwise until something clicked, then kept pulling out, revealing a bunch of buttons and indicator lights for some very custom features. Such as his barely legal 50bhp electric supercharger. Or the active gyroscopic stabilizer hidden under the sleeper. Or the only bit of Tinkertech he still had from before Chop Shop became Squealer: an "integrity field generator" that, somehow, made the trailer behave as integral to the truck; thus, along with the gyro, allowing him to not risk rollovers even when cornering hard with a full load.

As he had to wait several seconds for the gyro to rev up and the field generator to charge up its capacitors, he slipped on the mask and put on the bracelet.

"_State your cape name."_

"Mover of Goods."

"_Local cape or visitor?"_

"Local cape." He wasn't a cape, but that was irrelevant. Besides, he loathed the costume Marquis had commissioned for him: it made him look like Mario Bros.

"_State your preferred role in the coming fight."_

"I am delivering a truckload of live pigs to be used as biomass by Dryad. I am delivering them to the field hospital in the old YMCA. After that, I'm yours."

The bracelet then began explaining how to use its two buttons.

He filed the information, but also noted that the controls for the generator were reporting 75% charge, and for the gyro were reporting that it had hit 1200 rpm. It would still accelerate some more, but he was good to start rolling.

Shifting into gear, he did so.

Not a half mile downhill, still bringing him uncomfortably close to the fight, he took a look at his special controls (96%, 1350rpm) then at his tachometer, then muttered a prayer and prepared to enter the cloverleaf at the very unwise speed of 55 miles per hour.

This cloverleaf was a beauty: each leaf was two lines wide, steeply banked, and its pavement was always kept pristine. Back in the day, it was the midpoint in every race between him and Chop Shop. Races that eventually became her tossing him the keys so he could test ride each new vehicle hard, and him listening her squeal adorably as he drifted and did donuts. This cloverleaf would always be their special place.

He turned his wheel hard left, then pushed the nitrous oxide, and as soon as his eight rear wheels were spinning and his truck had gone sideways enough, he turned very rapidly almost all the way to the left.

Moments later he felt how the trailer too was going sideways. While the integrity field would kept it from tipping (as long as it lasted), it was on him to keep it from fishtailing out of control. His first nitro was spent, but he very much had an enviable engine.

Forty-five degrees in and he was fully in control. Of course, glancing down he could see the numbers of the integrity field dropping, but it hold... or so he hoped.

He held it.

He held it.

He held it.

And just as the integrity field began hitting single digits, he was at the end of the turn. He disengaged it, got traction on his ten wheels, then had to fight the trailer's fishtail from turning into a jackknife.

He came uncomfortably close to losing control, but a second nitrous charge let him outrun the trailer and get it back under control. And he was now doing 70, which was as fast as he dared on this deluge.

"I hope you heard those squealing tires, Sherrel," he muttered, as he toggled the field back on again and saw how its fast charge slowed down to a tickle.

* * *

He made it well in time across the bridge. He made it in nineteen minutes.

* * *

He was waited at the YMCA, where he was then guided to the back, to then unload his squealing cargo into the Y's empty Olympic pool (as an improvised corral). It was interesting to see his cargo being unloaded with parahuman powers, though.

He wished he had been able to take a glimpse at the Marchioness Amelia that he had once bounced on his knee, but he was informed Dryad was holed up inside that wooden dome and was pretty much in a trance. He did have a minute or two to hammer a quick text message to some of the old crowd with confirmation that Dryad was their lady, though.

* * *

He was then tasked to take his truck to one of the Endbringer shelters downtown and help to evacuate it.

Once at the shelter, his PRT minders instructed him to lock himself inside the cab and wait. Two kept guard of his cab, while the other three went to get the people from the shelter.

They loaded his trailer to the gills. His three-and-a-half level swine trailer was legally limited to 178 pigs. He hardly feared his truck being overburdened, but he worried a little about the trailer was riding very low, and feared how many people may simply end up smothered by the time they could be unloaded again. How many people did he have? He easily imagined three normal people taking the floor space of a pig, more given desperation. So easily six hundred souls? The PRT guys didn't know: they just loaded people in until no more could crush themselves in. He swore softly to himself not to do another drifting stunt unless he saw absolutely no alternative.

But then, ten seconds after he began driving again, a huge sinkhole opened up right in front of him.

He had absolutely no chance to manoeuvre and under a second to brake. He just thought about the hundreds of people trapped inside his cage-truck, closed his eyes as he fell in, and didn't see while a wall of water came to smack his windshield in.

* * *

"_Mover-Of-Goods: deceased. Lord Street Market Shelter."_

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

_Cancun had a great Carnival. The Golden Queen will still have Royal Duties for the next eleven months, but those will be few and far in between. I'll come back to my update schedule of 3 to 4 times a month. _

_Would everybody at a cape organization be a cape? Doctor Mother wouldn't agree. Would everybody at an Endbringer fight be a cape? Necessarily in the thick of it, but not so much in the periphery of the fight._


End file.
